Nintendo Blames Lack Of New Games On Wii U Development

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There’s no doubt about it – Nintendo has taken this generation by storm. Yes, it may be in trouble now, but for most of this generation, it has laughed all the way to the bank. For most of 2011, however, Nintendo has been leaving its fans hanging, delivering next to nothing when it comes to great software for the DS, 3DS, and Wii.

True, Kirby: Returned To Dreamland was just released and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is coming up next month on Wii. 3DS players also were recently given Star Fox 64 3D and are looking forward the release of both Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7 before the year is over, but why weren’t there any releases in the first half of the year?

According to Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, the reason there haven’t been many notable releases this year is because of the development of the Wii U:

Strong momentum is very important for game platform businesses and a strong software line-up to vitalize a platform is necessary to maintain this momentum. In the first half of this year, however, we could not make the continuing sales of the first-party software released last year as we had planned, nor, in the course of preparation of the next platform, could we release new key titles for the existing platform in a timely fashion due to completion delays until the latter half of this year.

After the upcoming November, however, anticipated titles for Nintendo 3DS will be continually released, which we hope will bring a big boost in the year-end sales season. We would like to thereby fulfill our responsibility to ensure bright prospects for this platform toward the next fiscal year and beyond.

Since I’m not really sure what the point of the Wii U actually is, I’m tempted to argue that maybe Nintendo should have given precedence to their consoles that are already on the market. Starving the Wii of releases for most of 2011 wasn’t a good idea, and choosing to release the year’s only notable releases in the middle of a major release season was an even worse one.

Hopefully when the Wii U is available Nintendo chooses to support it with software through its entire lifespan, or at the very least have software to support it from launch. What do you think of Iwata’s excuse? Head down to the comments section and sound off!