Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser on the impact of COVID-19

Just about everyone was impacted by the coronavirus pandemic in one way or another this year. Nintendo was not spared, as the company was affected in various ways and had plans impacted. We saw Switch shipments slow, its repair centers temporarily close, and more.

Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser further discussed the situation in an interview with Polygon. When asked how the coronavirus impacted Nintendo, Bowser said:

“It was impacted some, especially during the earlier days, as we were sorting through what was going to happen with retailers, how consumers were going to be consuming content in terms of media content – where were they going to get their news, their entertainment – because that was going to force us to potentially pivot some of the marketing side.

Obviously, my responsibilities are for Nintendo of America, which is much more of a sales and marketing function. We were in close contact with our parent company in Japan, understanding any possible impacts on dev cycles, and if that would alter at all our release schedules. As we watch that, and as there may have been slight changes in dates, then we’re trying to react with understanding what parts of our evergreen catalog could we insert and drive to continue to keep the momentum that we have been seeing as we went into the period.”

Bowser then added the following when Polygon asked if a certain game was able to fill in gaps:

“Yeah. We look at a number of different factors. First of all, we talk a lot here about audiences and the audiences that we want to target through various campaigns, through various efforts. Then, we look at the content that is coming our way, both hardware and software, and determine how that will fit into those audiences and how we want to communicate. And we have a good steady beat of new releases that come throughout the year.

Something unique about Nintendo is, our content is released year-round. But then, we also look at the content coming from our third-party publishing partners, whether those be AAA houses or indie developers, and figure out how to slot those in. And then, one thing we feel is unique about Nintendo is the strength of our evergreen catalog, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild or Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and how do we fit those into our messages? So we have news, and we have conversations that we can have year-round. And clearly that was heightened during the pandemic, to really understand as things were shifting. We had to be flexible, and we had to be nimble, and move those around.”