Nightly News Roundup: 2010.06.23

Iwata Blames Industry for Weak Sales, Tales of Trouble and No Dance Central for Wii.

By Abhinay Sawant. Posted 06/23/2010 23:22 1 Comment     ShareThis

Nightly News Roundup

Iwata Says Industry to Blame for Weak Sales, Not Economy

In an interview with VentureBeat, Nintendo President and CEO Satoru Iwata has placed the blame on game makers for the recent struggles that the video game industry is facing: “My belief is we should not blame the bad economy for the cause of slow sales of video games, The slow sales must be due to the lack of great software that everyone wants to buy. We have not shown off the great attractions of whatever we are selling. This is not the problem of Nintendo alone, but the entire video game industry.” The video game industry began facing unexpected troubles with weak game sales throughout 2009. Many thought that this was simply due to the weak lineup of games from that year. However, this year hit titles have appeared on all video game platforms such as Super Mario Galaxy 2, Red Dead Redemption and Mass Effect 2 but video game sales are down year over year by double digital percentages in three out of the first four months. Perhaps, the weak economy has affected the casual gamer segment more than expected? The video game sales picture appears to be a mystery to many.

Source: Gamespot


Tales Studio in Financial Trouble

Namco Tales Studio, the developers behind the Tales of RPG series, has run into financial trouble recently. A  publication from the developer has revealed that the studio has suffered a $1 million annual loss and has accumulated $21 million of debt, which is more than the value of its assets, making the studio insolvent. Namco Tales Studio is a private subsidiary of the parent company Namco so several options are on the table: declare bankruptcy, restructure its current obligations with its debtholders, ask the parent company Namco for more cash or have Namco reabsorb Tales Studio into the parent company. The troubles are affecting members of the Studio with Tales producer Makoto Yoshizumi commenting that “Meetings and conferences, sleepiness and struggle, it was a day of live or die, it’s going to be gloomy.” Still, most expect that the Tales of series is not in trouble as Namco is unlikely to discard of a well-established brand. However, this could affect decisions made by the studio in the short-term and perhaps call for a reorganizing of the studio’s priorities and approaches.

Source: Sankaku Complex


Dance Central Not Coming to Wii

If you watched the Microsoft E3 presser last week, you probably remembered Harmonix’s new project Dance Central being presented with Microsoft Kinect. In a private chat with Harmonix co-founder Alex Rigopulos, Kotaku learned that Harmonix is considering releasing the title on the PlayStation 3 with the PlayStation Move. However, Rigopulos has ruled out any Wii release stating that the Wii sensors don’t collect enough data and track things in the way that way would need.

Source: Kotaku

One Response to “Nightly News Roundup: 2010.06.23”

  • 1379 points
    xeacons says...

    Iwata is blaming shovelware and I completely agree. It’s hard to find hits in stores. Most stores keep shelf space clear for what they believe will sell, which mean clearing out good expensive hits for cheap crappy ones. Few places will have what you want. And even at the ones that do, you better know what you want before you go in, because browsing for a hit amongst shovelware is like trying to find a needle in a poopstack.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Log In 0 points Log in or register to grow your Ninja Score while interacting with our site.
Nintendojo's RSS Feeds

All Updates Podcast
News Comments
Like and follow usFacebookTwitter Friend Code Exchange + Game with Us Join the Team!