Iwata is human and makes mistakes. He assumed that the 3DS would carry with the DS's momentum, and it didn't. It probably would have missed the target even if it had launched at the current price.
Yup, he messed up. But I don't think his prediction was bad, I think he dropped the ball on managing Nintendo's software output. Where were the games targeted at non-gamers? Where was NSMB2? My problem with Nintendo right now is that they've veered away from what made them successful in 2006/2007. At that time, their focus was on the "blue ocean" - bringing in people who weren't playing video games. That's a huge market with a massive potential for growth, hence the outrageous sales of the DS and Wii. But in the last few years, they cut off software support for the Wii, killing it prematurely (non-gamers don't care if the tech is old), and they've veered towards the "red ocean" - customers that are already part of the market. The results of that strategy speak for themselves. Nintendo isn't crashing right now, but they can only be successful in such a competitive market when they focus on growing the market. They're not going to win by fighting for a share of Microsoft or Sony's market.
And sorry. I just hate that "it's selling well but that doesn't matter because they cut the price!" argument. I think it's a poor argument,
I think the 3DS is selling well, but that it is not selling at the pace Nintendo hardware should be selling. They crafted an unbelievably successful strategy at the beginning of this gen and there's no excuse for not following through on it. As for the price cut, it merely shows that the demand curve for the 3DS is radically different than what Nintendo anticipated. Nintendo thought they could move 16 million units at a premium price. At half that price, it should be dominating. Does that mean that sales are bad? No. It means that sales are underperforming.
To use an example from a different medium, Michael Jackson's "Thriller" album is the best selling album of all time. Every album he released after that sold millions, but they all underperformed relative to Thriller. We might conclude that that is inevitable considering Thriller's record breaking sales, but the facts still stand. In Nintendo's case, I think they could have maintained the sales momentum they had at with the DS and Wii, so I'm critical of their performance.
just like you think that it outselling the DS's first year in 8 months is a poor argument. (And I disagree with that, since if you add more context to that, mainly that it did it without a December and, as a result, is on-track to nearly double the DS's first year.)
There are a couple of problems with looking at DS's first year. The first, and most important is that Nintendo did not have what we now consider the DS/Wii software strategy in place. Nintendogs and Brain Age weren't ready at launch (the latter took time to find its audience), and NSMB did not come out until 2006. The DS was also competing with the GBA, which was massively popular, and the PSP, which had a strong launch. Nintendo marketed the DS as a "third piller", not as the successor to the handheld line. On top of all that, the DS was also a rushed, mediocre piece of hardware when it launched. There's no reason that the 3DS would have any trouble matching the DS's first year sales.
Getting back to my first point, Nintendo consoles that launched with a winning software strategy had no trouble selling well. The Wii exploded out of the gate selling to the same type of customer the DS sold to. I'm not saying we should compare home console sales directly to handheld sales, but if we look at momentum, there's no reason why a new Nintendo console aught to have a sluggish launch. Nintendo simply did not bring the games the expanded audience wanted, and now they are struggling to recover.
The 3DS's issue has always been games first. Nintendo cut the price because demand was too low and games can't pop out of thin air. That doesn't negate the fact that it's selling well. The games and price cut came too late to save it from falling short of the target. It's that simple.
I agree.
