Former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime has said that the Wii could’ve overtaken lifetime PS2 sales had its price been lowered in the late 2000s. Fils-Aime made this comment in his new memoir ‘Disrupting the Game: From the Bronx to the Top of Nintendo,’ as reported by Axios. The beloved executive thinks Nintendo missed an opportunity to sell more units.
The late Satoru Iwata also thought Wii could surpass PS2 sales
Fils-Aime isn’t the only Nintendo executive who thinks Wii had the potential to outsell the best-selling video game console of all time. The legendary Satoru Iwata, who sadly passed away in 2015, told Reuters back in 2007 that Wii could surpass PS2 sales, but price was not a factor in his consideration. “Sony’s PS2 sales of 100 million units [now approximately 158m] is an extraordinary number that our home game console business has not achieved,” Iwata-san said at the time. “But if we can make our bid to expand the gaming population a continued success, we could exceed that.” Iwata-san didn’t think there was any overlap between the group of customers Sony was targeting and Nintendo’s target market.
As Axios points out, consoles sold for a lot less back in the day with prices adjusted for inflation. That’s where Fils-Aime thinks Nintendo missed the opportunity. Console gaming cost more starting with the PS3 era, with both Sony and Microsoft managing to sell mid-cycle upgrades [PS4 Pro and Xbox One X] during the last console generation at full price. With the Switch, Nintendo certainly has no need for a significant price drop.
You can purchase Fils-Aime’s memoir here.
In other news, Godfall’s barebones Challenger Edition attracted over 2.5 million players on PS Plus despite backlash surrounding its inclusion in the lineup, and Final Fantasy devs have revealed that they were once working on a Bloodborne-style IP.
