06-25-2007, 08:20 AM
Quote:
Last week, after I wrote about the buzz currently surrounding Nintendo in Korea, my trip to Yongsan to pick up Wii Play revealed the situation to be far more drastic than I’d imagined.
I spoke with a number of store owners and asked them what was selling, and the answer I got was unanimous — DS lite. Here’s a rather exact transcription of what one retailer in particular had to say:
“Without DS lite, we’d have virtually no income at all, and it’s been this way for months. Our little market alone [‘Toad Market’] moves over 200 units a day, and while we don’t make any profit on the system itself, we make money off of the games. We also sell a good deal of imported Wiis on a daily basis. Nobody’s really buying 360s, the PSP is as good as dead, and PS3’s too expensive.”
I knew DS was a success, but I didn’t realize that things were this extreme. What surprised me, in particular, was what I was told about PSP, which I thought was still doing extremely well over here. The common consensus was that its sales leveled off months ago, and that there are very few new buyers.
When I asked them why things have turned out this way, they gave three reasons: advertising, Brain Age, and New Super Mario Brothers. The ads — starring Dong-gun Jang, the lovely Na-young Lee, and more — are on TV all the time and visible everywhere you go. In contrast, ads for other systems are hard to spot at best. Looks like NOK has made wise use of the sizeable budget that Iwata provided last year.
I spoke with a number of store owners and asked them what was selling, and the answer I got was unanimous — DS lite. Here’s a rather exact transcription of what one retailer in particular had to say:
“Without DS lite, we’d have virtually no income at all, and it’s been this way for months. Our little market alone [‘Toad Market’] moves over 200 units a day, and while we don’t make any profit on the system itself, we make money off of the games. We also sell a good deal of imported Wiis on a daily basis. Nobody’s really buying 360s, the PSP is as good as dead, and PS3’s too expensive.”
I knew DS was a success, but I didn’t realize that things were this extreme. What surprised me, in particular, was what I was told about PSP, which I thought was still doing extremely well over here. The common consensus was that its sales leveled off months ago, and that there are very few new buyers.
When I asked them why things have turned out this way, they gave three reasons: advertising, Brain Age, and New Super Mario Brothers. The ads — starring Dong-gun Jang, the lovely Na-young Lee, and more — are on TV all the time and visible everywhere you go. In contrast, ads for other systems are hard to spot at best. Looks like NOK has made wise use of the sizeable budget that Iwata provided last year.