Over 10 million Swapnote messages exchanged, “plans to encourage more people to use it”
Swapnote has been very successful since its arrival on the eShop. In a four week period following its launch, over 10 million notes were exchanged.
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata is hoping that the app will continue to be used in the future. He noted that the company is working on “some plans to encourage more people to use it, and you will find out what I am talking about when we reveal such plans in the future.”
Iwata said:
“I’m afraid I cannot show you anything quantitative as I have no data here. The only quantitative thing I can tell you is that more than 10 million handwritten notes have been exchanged in the four weeks after the launch of the service, which you can see in the Iwata Asks interview posted on our website (in Japan) just the other day. So I can say that users are using this software actively to some extent. And, I believe that the number of handwritten notes to be exchanged will increase at an accelerated pace if we can have users continue to enjoy the software for a long time. In fact, we have some plans to encourage more people to use it, and you will find out what I am talking about when we reveal such plans in the future. Therefore, we believe this software will gain more popularity going forward. From a qualitative standpoint, “Swapnote” is very popular among women. Watching the people around our employees and myself, I have the impression that a lot of women of all ages enjoy using it. Therefore, this software works really well to have women feel familiar with the Nintendo 3DS. I will be preparing some quantitative data for the next briefing.”