Following the Media Summit event last week, George Harrison was asked several detailed questions about the Wii and DS, their competitors, their partners on the Virtual Console and Nintendo continuing strategy in appealing to the mass market and how they intend to go about selling such odd titles at retail. Excerpt and link below:
Wired News: At the same time, when I look to the Wii lineup for the rest of the year, what seem to be the biggest games on the schedule are things like Super Mario Galaxy, and Metroid, and Super Smash Bros.: things that are aimed at the core gamer. And not much besides Big Brain Academy, Wii Health Pack, Wii Music this year in the US? I know they’re this year in Japan, but…Â on the horizon from Nintendo [first-party] that’s aimed at the mass market. Are we going to see things like
George Harrison: We’re going to unveil some additional products for the expanded audience at E3 in July. One thing you have to remember about the expanded audience is, they are not so focused on a category that something is launched, known by everyone, and done with. And so I think we have to change our mentality. As we got into the months of March and were tracking the awareness, awareness of Wii is still at about 60% among people over 25. That means that 40% of the population has still never heard of Wii. It’s hard to imagine, but it’s true. And as a result, to them, Wii Sports and other things are still brand new. So don’t be surprised if you continue to see us send out some messages in the fall about Wii Sports, or the Mii channel, or other kinds of things. Because the expanded audience may have been intrigued last holiday, or even in the early part of 2007, but they’ll need to be reminded about what the things were that appealed to them, that’ll push them over the hump this year to buy the hardware.
