Nintendo of America CEO and President Reggie Fils-Aime has stated that he feels that Nintendo’s formidable software line-up for the holiday season will lead to strong sales, despite elevated competition from their rivals, reports Gamasutra.
“The holidays are more important to Nintendo than to other manufacturers,” Fils-Aime explained, at the recent BMO Capital Markets Annual Digital Entertainment Conference in New York. “We have a distinct edge when it comes to gift-giving, and it’s no doubt because of the familiarity and recognition of both our brand and key franchises.”
Nearly half of all hardware sales for the year came in the last two months of 2009, with Fils-Aime commenting “For everyone else that number was just over 40 percent. The disparity on the software side is even greater. For Nintendo platforms, 44 percent of all game sales came during November and December. For the rest of the industry, that number was only 33 percent.”
Fils-Aime also revealed that he expected “the same kind of advantage here at the end of 2010,” due to key holiday releases such as Donkey Kong Country Returns and Disney’s Epic Mickey for Wii, as well as Golden Sun: Dark Dawn on DS.
Further to this, Nintendo is hoping that there’ll be strong support from consumers for Activision and Eurocom’s recently released Goldeneye 007, with its N64 counterpart having sold over 5 million copies within the US.
It isn’t all about software however, with Nintendo offering unique hardware bundles to celebrate the Super Mario series’ 25th Anniversary. “From a Nintendo perspective, we have two red bundles in the marketplace that we didn’t have last year. We’ve already begun getting a broad range of products for consumers,” File-Aime added. “The Nintendo difference continues to attract new consumers. For us at Nintendo, it’s full speed ahead.”
Fils-Aime: Holiday season “more important to Nintendo” than their competitors
