THQ recently showed its support for Nintendo's upcoming 3DS but it's not forgetting about the Wii or the DS in doing so. Jon Rooke, THQ's UK Managing Director has told GamesIndustry.biz that the company is confident that the Wii and DS market will bounce back from slumps in sales with a strong Christmas season this year.
This optimism is backed by the launch of THQ's Kids, Family and Casual marketing campaign, with its slogan of 'Great Games, Great Value':
The whole campaign is focused with retail in mind, so all the TV will be tagged with a retailer. A 30-second ad might have two or three titles in it, and the end message will be something like: 'Great games, such as Megamind, available now from ASDA' - at whatever the pricing is.
Rooke notes that the Wii software market seems to follow a trend: a decline in sales throughout Summer and Autumn, then an increase from the tail-end of October through November and December, with particularly strong performances in the Christmas periods:
It's one of those challenges that everyone forgets - what's happened before. The Wii is behaving a bit more like a toy - people get it out at Christmas, start playing with it again. It's not depressed in that people aren't engaging with the Wii - there are a lot of active users out there, they haven't put it away and it's still set up next to the TV in the living room. But they probably just haven't had a really compelling piece of software to get hold of to really engage with.
With a statement like that, it's interesting to see THQ's October-December line-up consists of titles like WWE Smackdown Vs. Raw 2011, Dreamworks' Megamind: Mega Team Unite, Dreamworks' Megamind: The Blue Defender and Truth Or Lies. Which of those makes you want to dust off your consoles and engage in some compelling gaming?
[source gamesindustry.biz]
Comments 10
i no when i was little a couple of my favorite games for my gameboy advance but i have not purchased anymore of theirs since then but i hope they will b just as good as from when i was young
Why THQ gotta front?
What happened to the Wii being its hardest winter? Now it got steroids and is strong again?
Lol I'm going to buy all of those games day one for sure Haven't used my Wii in ages /sarcasm
While I'm not so sure about their games (lol), I do agree that the Wii and DS will bounce back during the holiday season. Don't forget people, the Wii sold 3.8 million units in December 2009 in JUST the US. In August/September 2009 the Wii was also recieving "TEH WII IZ DOOOMED!" comments, but then that happened.
But there's this thing called Kinect that can surely prevent this!
@Iz2010 i don't think Kinect will go very far game wise i just don't like the thought of jumping up and doing the games that i did a long time ago when the wii first came out.
The Wii has plenty of 'compelling' games, but only stuff like Wii Party gets advertised. If games like Goldeneye or Metroid had TV adverts, people would start to get the impression that the Wii is more than just a toy.
yeah but nintendo only wants to advitise games published by nintendo but i do agree they need to advitise better and real games
I remember seeing a Metroid: Other M ad on TV that was pretty striking. Granted, I'd already pre-ordered my copy, so I wasn't the intended audience. But they put some $$$ behind a "real" game as recently as a couple of months ago, so I'm not complaining too heavily about their marketing. I hope Wii Party sells a ba-jillion, too. Whether it will or not remains to be seen. But it cracks me up when these evergreen titles by Nintendo outsell the latest&greatest from their competitors.
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