The Wii U software drought has been quite a burden for the console, with sales slowing each week, sales that weren't great in the first place. Indeed, if it wasn't for third-party support with titles such as Monster Hunter and LEGO City, the Wii U would be in an even worse situation, so why hasn't Nintendo been releasing their own titles?

According to Iwata, it was never their intention to rely soley on third-parties post launch, but in order to maintain quality in their titles, more time was needed. 

Speaking to investors, Iwata stated that titles such as Pikmin 3 had to slip in order to add 'final touches'.

"We originally planned to release a few first-party titles for Wii U during the first half of this year, but no big titles are scheduled for release before Pikmin 3 in July [in Japan] because we decided to take time to add the final touches to ensure that consumers fully feel that they are valuable titles. The brand of a franchise would be completely degraded without customer satisfaction. This is why we delayed the release schedule of such games."

But has it harmed Wii U more to delay these titles, than to release them at a slightly lower quality? It certainly hasn't stopped Nintendo in the past, as Wind Waker's famous lost dungeon proves. Iwata believes that their new strategy is paying off though, and they have proved it with titles such as Animal Crossing. 

"We have recently reaffirmed the fact that a delicately crafted game will never fail to appeal to consumers. A good example is Animal Crossing: New Leaf which we released at the end of last year. 

The reason why Fire Emblem Awakening and Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon have been well received by consumers in the U.S. and European markets is that they still respect the value of games that have been carefully developed to take advantage of a dedicated gaming machine. 

It is true that the overseas video game market has been in a downturn for the last two years, but we believe there is a way to buck the trend."

Whilst the software drought has no doubt done some damage, Iwata does prove his point well with his last statement. Luigi's Mansion 2 and Fire Emblem certainly took their sweet time to release, but when they actually did, they set the 3DS on fire in the West, which was always lagging compared to its performance in Japan.

If Nintendo's Wii U offerings are of a similar quality and cause the same impact, then the wait will have paid off after all. What do you think? Are you glad that Nintendo are taking their time or do you think they really needed to ramp up development to ensure a steady flow of titles?