Nintendo Co said that it would launch a new version of its blockbuster "Wii Sports" software in Japan in June to shore up flagging Wii console sales in its home market but that it planned no hardware price cuts at the moment.
Nintendo's earlier "Wii Sports" game helped drive its console sales. The game allows users to play baseball, tennis and other sports using a motion-sensing controller.
Wii Sports Resort, which will hit overseas markets in July, lets users throw a frisbee to a virtual dog or duel one another with swords with the controller, which looks like a TV remote and enables gamers to direct on-screen play by swinging it like a racket or baseball bat.
"The software is one of the key games Nintendo will launch this business year," Rakuten Securities analyst Yasuo Imanaka said.
"I think it will definitely be software that can propel sales of hardware," he said.
Nintendo's Wii game console far outsells Microsoft Corp's Xbox 360 and Sony Corp's PlayStation 3 globally.
But in Japan, sales of the PS3 outstripped those of the Wii in March for the first time in 16 months thanks to new PS3 titles from Sega Sammy and Capcom, game magazine publisher Enterbrain said this week.
"Wii (demand) is not vigorous at the moment in Japan," Nintendo President Satoru Iwata told reporters at a lunch meeting. "In fact, it is in the most unhealthy situation since its launch in Japan."
Iwata said, however, he had no plan to cut hardware prices to stir up demand.
"If our products are not much different from competitors', price cuts would generate significant fresh demand. But video games are just not that kind of product," he said.
Nintendo first showed its Wii Sports Resort game to the media last July, along with "Wii Music", which lets players simulate more than 60 different instruments. It said back then that it would launch the sports game in spring 2009.
Nintendo's strategy to broaden the gaming population by offering intuitive and easy-to-play games, rather than focusing on high-speed plays and life-like graphics for core gamers, has proved successful.
Strong sales of both the Wii and Nintendo's handheld DS player despite the global slowdown had led the company to expect a record 530 billion yen operating profit for the year that ended on March 31.
That contrasts sharply with other major Japanese exporters such as Sony and Toyota Motor Corp, which are set to post billions of dollars of losses for the business year just ended amid slumping demand and a strengthening yen.
Industry specialists say video games are generally better positioned to weather a slowing economy than such big ticket items as cars and flat TVs.
Nintendo said in January it aimed to sell 31.5 million units of the DS and 26.5 million units of the Wii in the year that ended in March.
Nintendo's shares closed down 2.6 percent at 28,000 yen, while the benchmark Nikkei average gained 3.7 percent.
