Being interviewed at the Nintendo Media Summit yesterday, Nintendo America president Reggie Fils-Aime has warned would-be buyers to expect hardware shortages of the Wii at least until the end of March.
Fils-Aime attributes the shortages to the unexpected record sales in December, where the company sold 3.8 million units.
“On the Wii hardware side, we are back to a situation where demand is exceeding supply and we’re going to be in that situation through the end of March,” says Fils-Aime. “You can’t sell 3.8m units in one month without that suction of demand pulling product through the distribution channel.”
The president continued: “It obviously caught us a little bit off-guard and we’re rapidly trying to rectify the situation.”
After selling the record amount of Wiis in December, sales fell off 31 percent in January, leading many analysts to ask Nintendo whether there was supply issues.
Result for: interview
According to an interview with IGN, Sony senior VP of marketing Peter Dille says the company is on the fast track to passing the Xbox 360 in sales soon, also saying that the PS3 will still be around in 10 years, and the 360 will not.
“We can be passionate fans, but I don’t think they’ll be around in 10 years so I’m very confident we’ll pass them within that time frame,” says Dille. “I mean, we’ve got 31 million [units sold] worldwide right now - they’ve got 39 million [units sold]. I don’t even need to go out 10 years. I’m not going to make any predictions for your interview today other than we’ll pass them, but you look at where we are today and where they are today, and they had an opportunity to sprint as far ahead of us as possible when they had the head start. Well, we’re breathing down their necks and they can see us in the rearview mirror and it’s not going to take too long to pass them.”
Additionally, Dille confirmed that the company would begin adding subscription models to PSN, although gaming would remain completely free.
Result for: interview
According to an interview with Japanese site Asahi, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata says a new DS handheld is in development, one that will include an HD resolution screen and a motion sensor.
The handheld is being developed in-house, will have a 1024 x 768 resolution screen, will have ability to download e-books via 3G of Wi-Fi, and will include the motion sensor, allowing accelerometer technology for gaming.
When asked when the next DS would hit the States, Iwata was careful to not say anything. Our guess? 2011.
