Speaking during a second quarter earnings call, EA CEO John Riccitiello expressed his frustration at Wii's stalled sales during the first half of the business year when the company's increased investments meant that it held the lion's share of the console's third party sales.
"To be honest with you, I think the Wii platform has been a little weaker than we had certainly anticipated. And there is no lack of frustration to be doing that at precisely the time where we have the strongest third-party share," he said.
"We are reaching out to Nintendo to find ways to partner to push third-party software harder," the CEO added. "I frankly think they need more beats in the year than they get out of a first party slate to be able to have the Wii software platform perform as well as they would like and we are building the products that are I think the most highly rated on the platform and at this point in time, generating the most revenue of any third party platform."
"Very, very few multiplatform titles are succeeding on the Wii so far and collectively, Electronic Arts and Nintendo need to tackle that," Riccitiello concluded before reaffirming that EA is the leading independent publisher on Wii year-to-date with a 21 per cent share in North America and 14 per cent in Europe. "While we have hit our share goal for the Wii business, revenue is well below expectations due to underperformance of the Wii platform."
