Wii sales have fallen for nine consecutive months in the US, but Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime has said that he expects the industry to rebound.
“Our read on the consumer is very strong,” the executive told Bloomberg. “What we are seeing today is a strong momentum for hardware and software.”
Year-to-date, US games industry sales are down 12.1 per cent compared to 2008, but Fils-Aime forecasts that software growth will help arrest the decline. “Profitability in this industry is in software. The software peak in this industry should be this year and next year."
He also noted that Nintendo commands “a growing advantage against key competitors” thanks to relatively high sales of the company’s Wii and DS versus Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s PS3 and PSP - Wii has been the top-selling home console in the US every month except one since launching in 2006. "I look at our performance and see it’s right on track with where we believed it would be," he said.