Nintendo has a pretty serious problem on its hands: The Wii is outselling the Wii U, and the Wii isn’t selling that well. The public doesn’t understand what the Wii U is or why they should buy one. So Nintendo is doing something that’s… actually really sensible and a great idea: They’re teaming up with Best Buy to put unreleased games into stores for you to try out.
It’ll happen next month, during E3, and is probably one of the most aggressive PR moves Nintendo has made in a long, long time:
Details are scarce, but it appears to mean that, instead of squeezing into the Los Angeles Convention Center during the week of June 10 to wait on lines to play the next big Wii U games five months before they’re released, you can go to a Best Buy in the U.S. or Canada to do the same.
What’s better is that all you don’t need to be a reporter, a games industry professional or the editor-in-chief of the brand-new, just-happened-to-launch-it-in-time-for-June NintendoIsTheBest.Net in order to get access to a Best Buy. You can just walk in the door.
Normally we’d make fun, but, realistically, this is genuinely smart. It’ll get gamers on the fence about buying a Wii U into a Best Buy to try it out. It means people wandering in to buy HDMI cables or something will get a chance to try the system. And it’s also an aggressive announcement that, yeah, games are coming by the boatload for the Wii U, something Nintendo needs since support for the system is apparently drying up fast.
Honestly, the biggest roadblock to any system is proving it’s got games you want to play. Nintendo is making a hard push to show people what they’ve got, and we’ll be curious to see what arrives in June.