Nintendo reported yesterday plans to cut the price of its Wii console to $150 as soon as May 15. Over the past year, Wii sales have slowed considerably. Nintendo revealed earlier this year that it sold about 7 million Wii units in the U.S. in 2010. It had sold more than 10 million units in 2008 and about 9 million units in 2009. The Wii has trailed the Xbox 360 so far this year in overall sales.

Wii chatter

The price drop generated a small increase in chatter. However, we noticed a much higher spike in chatter around Wii conversations on April 25. Further analysis showed us that Nintendo announced plans to release Wii 2 in 2012 that day.

Wii vs. PlayStation vs. Xbox

As we posted yesterday, PlayStation has been facing increased negative buzz due to its hacked PlayStation Network. Regardless, Xbox has generated the highest amount of buzz overall throughout the last month.

Nintendo this weekend launched its new Nintendo 3DS, which lets users play 3D games without wearing special glasses. It also takes 3D photos, and this summer will play 3D movies streamed from Netflix on its 3.5 inch screen.

Nintendo 3DS vs. PlayStation 3 vs. XBox 360

Nintendo 3DS chatter spiked above industry leading gaming platforms XBox 360 and PlayStation 3 following its launch.

Nintendo 3DS sentiment

Conversations around Nintendo 3DS are currently 80% positive.

Nintendo 3DS conversation topics

3D is appearing in 38% of conversations and is 90% positive.

Top Influencers

Engadget is currently the most influential content publisher around Nintendo 3DS.

Content distribution

Microblogs are currently generating the most conversations around Nintendo 3DS.

The August 2009 Social Radar Top 50 measures the brands with the most active Web presence based on overall online conversation volume. To create the Top 50 list, we used Social Radar to analyze millions of blog posts, news feeds, forums, social networks and Twitter posts to aggregate a list of the words and brands mentioned most frequently on the Web during August 2009. The list measures the number of unique individuals or sources that posted content about each brand during August 2009 rather than the overall number of mentions, which would be more heavily influenced by big fans who post frequently about a specific brand.

Twitter holds its reign at number 1 yet again. Disney jumps 9 spots and Marvel joins the list as Disney’s acquisition of Marvel made huge news at the end of the month. Playstation launched 11 spots due to the introduction of the PS3 Slim with its long-awaited price drop. Xbox 360 also made news with the announcement of a price drop, sneaking it up 3 spots.

Also worth mentioning, the build-up of chatter momentum for the upcoming NFL season rose NFL 13 spots. Firefox and NASA both take a dive as natural fallout from their big announcements last month: NASA’s 40 year celebration of Apollo 11 and Firefox’s version 3.5 update.

View the full list below, or download the PDF. For additional information about how you can analyze chatter sentiment to gauge positivity/negativity, view key words mentioned about your brand and identify key influencers, visit www.infegy.com/socialradar.

Questions or comments? Twitter me @adamcoomes.