Oli Welsh
10:56 (BST)
09/04/2009
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Nintendo ready to revive the Japanese market - Iwata
Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata believes his company is ready to rescue the Japanese videogame market from decline, despite falling Wii sales in the country.
"The Japanese market is not very strong right now overall," Iwata told the Wall Street Journal, "so we need to do something to re-energise it."
Iwata was not responding to lacklustre Wii sales in Japan, but to the yearly decline of game sales across the region - around 18 per cent last year.
He is confident that Nintendo can not only match PlayStation 3's building momentum in Japan, but once again top the regional market.
The Wall Street Journal, however, pointed out that events like this blip in Wii sales can often be mirrored in other markets - those that Nintendo routinely dominates right now.
But the Mario-maker put on a brave face and denied weakness, claiming it was "not particularly concerned" about the Japanese sales results for March.
Nintendo used its Japanese press conference today to announce initial Western sales numbers for DSi, and to rule out a price cut for Wii, Kotaku reports.
DSi sold 600,000 units during its first two days on sale in North American and Europe, Satoru Iwata and Shigeru Miyamoto told the press.
They also said that there were no plans to cut the price of DS or Wii, despite the latter's falling sales in Japan.
They did discuss additional services that might come to DSi in future: museum maps, tour guides, and schoolroom applications. But, they said, Nintendo was not going to head off the threat from Apple's iPhone by moving into the mobile phone market.
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