In the half year to the end of September sales were down by 40% compared with the year before. Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has no option but to admit: “Nintendo Wii has stalled.” He even admitted that the price drop has failed to arrest the decline: “With the price drop, sales returned to a certain level, but they just did not reach the level of last year around this time”. Which was all as inevitable as night follows day.A lot of the success of the Wii was just a fad. People became lemmings under the onslaught of peer pressure, just like with the Hula Hoop and Rubik’s Cube for previous generations. And fads have very sudden endings as the zeitgeist moves on to something new.
The Wii is a very strange and paradoxical device. Its hardware capability is mainly last generation, yet it boasts an innovative and compelling gesture interface. Most Wiis are bought as family toys and are little used, yet it has some amazing games including possibly the stand-out title of this generation, Super Mario Galaxy.
Source: SeekingAlpha