Nintendo Says Women, Elderly Key to Wii Game Player (Update2)

Sept. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Nintendo Co. said its new Wii game console, an easy-to-use player that can also trawl the Internet, may win over millions of first-time video gamers, helping the company reclaim the market lead from Sony Corp.

``We want to appeal to mothers who don't want consoles in their living rooms, and to the elderly and to young women,'' President Satoru Iwata said in an interview. ``It's a challenge, like trying to sell cosmetics to men.''

Nintendo's Wii will compete with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360 for a bigger share of the $20 billion global game-console market, which the Kyoto, Japan-based company hasn't led since 1994. The Wii features a TV-remote-size controller that players can brandish like a sword or swing like a racket, with the movements replicated onscreen.

``Wii definitely could become the most popular console of all time,'' said Hirokazu Hamamura, president of Tokyo-based video-game researcher Enterbrain Inc. ``Non-gamers can see how fun it is just by looking at people playing it, and that's very different from the PS3 or Xbox 360.''

The features may help the company win customers faster than its current offering, the Nintendo DS portable player, Iwata said on Sept. 14 in Chiba prefecture, east of Tokyo. ``If we can do this, the Wii could break all the boundaries in terms of user rates for game consoles,'' he said.

Shares of Nintendo, the world's biggest maker of handheld game players, gained 0.5 percent to 22,460 yen at the 11 a.m. break in Tokyo. The stock rose 58 percent this year, beating Sony's 2.5 percent gain. The Nikkei 225 Stock Average declined 0.9 percent in the same period.

Male Players

Some 62 percent of game players are male, the U.S.-based Entertainment Software Association said on its Web site. About 26 percent, or 31 million people, in Japan play video games, according to the country's Computer Entertainment Supplier's Association.

Nintendo will start selling the Wii, pronounced ``we,'' on Nov. 19 in the U.S. and on Dec. 2 in Japan. It will sell for $249.99, half the $499 Sony plans to charge for the cheapest PlayStation 3, which goes on sale in Japan on Nov. 11.

Microsoft's Xbox 360, released last November, retails for no more than $399 for a version with a hard disk. The company will begin selling a cheaper model without a hard disk in Japan for 29,800 yen ($252) from Nov. 2.

``We are not battling Sony or Microsoft,'' Iwata said. ``Our enemy is consumer indifference to games.''

Next-Generation TV

Nintendo has included a raft of features, including software that allows buyers to create characters resembling themselves by tapping a database of facial features. The player will provide weather information, news and an Internet browser, all of which may attract non-gamers to use the console, Iwata said.

``Wii is the first machine that has the potential to truly prompt people to use the Internet on their television,'' said Tokyo-based Nomura Securities Co. analyst Eiichi Katayama, who rates Sony ``neutral'' and doesn't have a rating on Nintendo. ``It could turn into the next-generation television.''

Nintendo lost the top position in the global gaming industry after Sony started selling the PlayStation in 1994, and its market share fell further with the debut of Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox in 2002.

The PlayStation 2, introduced in March 2000, is the world's leading game machine, with 106 million units sold.

Still, Nintendo's DS and the slimmer DS Lite accounted for 63 percent of Japanese computer gaming sales in the six months to June 25, according to researcher Enterbrain. New varieties of software, including ``Nintendogs,'' through which users own a virtual puppy, and the quiz challenge, ``Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day!'' prompted non-gamers to pick up the DS, Iwata said.

Declining Market

The new offerings from Nintendo and Sony may help revive the Japanese market for game machines, which fell for three straight years until 2004, when the DS and Sony's first handheld players were released. Japan is Nintendo's largest market.

The company's biggest challenge will be in demonstrating the Wii's features to non-gamers because the device isn't portable, Enterbrain's Hamamura said.

An increase in the number of game titles for the Wii will help the company attract users, Iwata said. The success of the DS and DS Lite prompted software publishers such as Activision Inc. to create more games for the Wii, which will help boost sales of the machine, he said.

Activision will have five games for the Wii's U.S. debut, the company's biggest lineup for a new console, Robert Kotick, chief executive officer of the Santa Monica, California-based company, said in a statement on Sept. 14.

More Games

Nintendo expects to have 30 games in the U.S. and 27 in Japan by Dec. 31, including Wii Sports, a compilation of tennis, baseball, golf, bowling and boxing.

Sony, which hasn't given the number of titles it will introduce with the PlayStation 3, said on Sept. 6 it will delay the European debut of the console by four months to March. The company also halved its shipment target this year to 2 million units because it wouldn't be able to make a key component on time.

``Sony's PS3 is said to be too sophisticated for some overseas developers, which has led them to turn to the Wii'' to have products in time for Christmas, said Etsuko Tamura, an analyst with Mizuho Investors Securities Co., who rates Nintendo ``neutral plus.''

To contact the reporters on this story: Kyoko Suzuki in Tokyo at ksuzuki3@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Teo Chian Wei at cwteo@bloomberg.net