Reggie says Mario Odyssey, Zelda, and Mario Kart have 50% attach rate, talks Switch’s strong momentum and more
Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime has returned with another round of comments about Switch and more. The latest statements come as part of an interview with IGN.
First up, on the topic of games, Reggie highlighted that Super Mario Odyssey, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe have an incredible attach rate of 50%. He said:
“Those three games continue to attach to hardware at better than 50 percent. Just think about that. For everyone who owns a system, more than one out of every two have bought Zelda, more than one out of every two have bought Kart, more than one out of every two have bought Odyssey. That’s never happened in U.S. video game history.”
Reggie added that Nintendo will be looking to keep Switch’s momentum going into 2019, which will be aided by “key franchises”.
“We’ve launched many systems, we’ve seen what works in driving a system forward. We’ve seen where we’ve lost momentum, and a critical component is having a great cadence of launches, and as you highlight, we have a number of key franchises teed up for next year.”
“But the other element is making sure that we also surprise with something that is completely unexpected, but brings new consumers into the platform. And that’s what Nintendo Labo was all about. And we’re going to be continuing to drive Nintendo Labo. The announcement we made in partnering with the Institute of Play, and leveraging the STEAM elements of those experiences, these are all part of the grand plan to continue making Nintendo Switch a very effective platform.”
The next topic Reggie addressed is Switch’s success. Since the system launched in March as opposed to the year-end season like most platforms, you can’t make direct comparisons.
“Nintendo looks at historical performance of past systems. Not only our own, but also competitive platforms. As you note, because of a March 3rd launch, lining it up in terms of number of months on the market, the number of holidays really is a key element to seeing how you’re stacking up.”
“So from my perspective, the right time to look at our performance against history is going to be as we come out of that holiday time frame. That way we’ll be able to say after roughly 21 months, how do we stack up against all of the systems that have launched here in the U.S. and what the sell-through looks like. And that’ll be a nice moment for us to consider where we are, and also to think about how do we continue driving momentum. As you stated, we’ve already outsold the GameCube, we’ve already outsold the Wii U. How we continue to track against past systems will be something that we look at.”
Finally, Reggie shared the following about Switch’s momentum and how optimistic Nintendo feels currently:
“We’re exceptionally thrilled with the momentum that we have with the Nintendo Switch. How we see the holidays shaping up, certainly from the Americas standpoint, it really is going to be a strong holiday for us. With the games that we’ve announced for the first calendar quarter, we think that momentum will power through. Certainly whether it’s when Mr. Furokawa speaks to the analyst community in January or when we share our full fiscal year information in April, we’ll be sharing even more of what our calendar looks like to continue driving the momentum.”
“But we feel really good about where we are. We feel good about how we’re tracking against…let me call it ‘historical norms.’ In the end, as long as we continue to have this really strong cadence of software, as well as strong support from the third-party community, big or small, we’re thinking we’re going to be really well positioned.”
