Iwata on Wii U pricing, other tidbits from investor’s Q&A
Update: A few more details have come in. We’ve posted those below as well.
– “If we can’t provide overwhelming fun not possible with free or 85-yen games, Nintendo and consoles have no value.”
– Iwata wants to explain Miiverse service in detail through a Nintendo Direct before Wii U launches
– Can become friends with others through Miiverse
– It’s a critical mission for Nintendo to increase the number of friends to play with
– Iwata contrasted this with the prior requirement of Friend Code exchanges to prevent a few bad apples from ruining a safe gameplay experience
– Iwata thinks third-party share of software sales on Wii U to increase earlier than on DS or for foreign publishers on Wii
Original post: The transcript of Nintendo’s latest investor’s briefing Q&A has been published online. Although it’s only available in Japanese at the moment, a few tidbits have been translated.
First, one of the major points to come out of the Q&A concerns the Wii U price point. Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said that the 3DS’ quick price cut affected pricing of the upcoming console, as the company did not want consumers to worry about a similar situation. The Wii U price was determined based on customer expectations as well as to keep people from holding out for a big, sudden price drop.
Iwata also spoke briefly about the popularity of Nintendo Direct. Between 600,000 and one million viewers have tuned in to the past few broadcasts. The Japanese Animal Crossing: New Leaf presentation has been viewed over 1.1 million times on YouTube.
It also looks like Iwata addressed the topic of new IPs. He told investors that criticizing a lack of innovation over IP-heavy lineups means you’re looking only at the titles and not their contents. Iwata noted that franchises such as Mario and Pokemon would decay if they lacked innovation.
