Hudson announced just last week that its Nintendo Wii game Deca Sporta (Deca Sports in the West) has sold through two million copies - unarguably, one of the most successful Nintendo Wii third party titles worldwide. Accordingly, the company shipped some 85,000 copies of the sequel for its launch day this Thursday in Japan, going as far as to employ multi-platinum boy band superstars Hey! Say! JUMP in its frequently run television commercials.According to reliable, respected salesblogger Sinobi, however, Deca Sporta moved just 2,500 copies its first day - 3% of the total shipment. While no game's sales should be judged by day one alone, it is worth noting that the original's launch day sales in Japan were a solid 30,000, with 50% sell-through.
This is just the latest grim Nintendo-related news item in April - Nintendo DSi's Western launch may have done very well, but the company's stock is down 7.5% today following its first NPD sales dip post-supply constraints. In Japan, PS3 outsold the Wii last month, prompting Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata to state the console was "experiencing the most unhealthy condition since it hit the Japan market."
The situation is so disturbing that major Japanese tech news site Impress Watch was moved to post an opinion piece about a speculative "Nintendo crash". While somewhat alarmist, the article does raise one important question: What if Nintendo sales begin to slow worldwide, as they have in Japan since January? The author, Hiroshige Goto, pinpoints a crippling lack of software for Wii in 2009, along with the allure of high-profile PS3 releases like Resident Evil 5 and Yakuza 3. With no clear must-have Wii titles on the horizon save Wii Sports Resort, the prospect of a worldwide Nintendo slump becomes a plausible notion. Clearly, all eyes will be on Nintendo this E3.