Pachter: Nintendo is a victim of its own success

The Nintendo Wii.

Sales for the Nintendo Wii have been down in 2009 compared to the  previous record-breaking years. Furthermore, hardcore gamers aren’t exactly pleased with the system’s lineup due to the lack of hardcore titles.

Michael Pachter, Analyst for Wedbush Securities, says that the current problems of the Nintendo Wii were related to the early success of the system. Here is what he said during the latest Bonus Round episode:

Nintendo is a victim of its own success. I think had they have the opportunity to do things over again, and I know they all deny this, they would have priced the Wii a bit higher, they would have spaced out their hardcore games. Instead of selling 26 million Wiis worldwide, they would have sold 18 or 20 million and done it consistently. The hardcore games would come out every six months. Everybody’ll be happy.

And, you know, let’s not fault them for being less than perfect. They were more than perfect in the first year and a half of the Wii’s existence and they’ve been less than perfect since. Still the number one console and still doing fine.

I don’t fault them at all. I think that they were probably a bit insecure at launch. They weren’t really sure this thing’s going to sell they thought it was, which was 16 million units. So they really try to frontload the release schedule to guarantee success and it more than worked. And so now we’re faulting them for having been so phenomenally successful early on.