A while back, Nintendo was hoping the that Wii would sell thrice as many units as the 20 million GameCubes now collecting dust, sitting in the backs of closets, or worse. With Nintendo projecting to fly past the 20 million mark by the end of the fiscal year, NCL President Satoru Iwata has his sights set on a loftier goal: the sales record of the Sony PlayStation 2.
“Sony’s PS2 sales of 100 million units is an extraordinary number that our home game console business has not achieved. But if we can make our bid to expand the gaming population a continued success, we could exceed that.”
Actually, the sales are closer to 120 million PlayStation 2 units, but a large portion of those sales are from consumers having to purchase consoles after a previous one failed, or from simply wanting the newer PS2 Slim. While Sony recently announced a “price cut” for the 60GB model of the PS3 (which will coincidentally be phased out after this month) as well as a PSP Slim of sorts, Iwata doesn’t believe that any increased demand Sony receives will affect Nintendo’s steamroller.
“I wouldn’t say there is no overlap between the group of customers Sony is targeting and the group of users that Nintendo is targeting. But that overlap is quite small.”
What about the DS? Do you think that will past 120 million?
