Nintendo’s Damon Baker on why North America doesn’t have the standard New 3DS, engaging with the community
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in New Nintendo 3DS, News | 49 Comments
Damon Baker, Nintendo of America’s senior manager in marketing and licensing, has offered further comments regarding the company’s decision to only release the New 3DS XL in North America. Unlike other territories, the standard model that supports cover plates is not being sold in the states.
Baker told Nintendo Life:
Yeah (laughs). Look, the face plates are super cool, but we’re a different market. And now we have clear differentiation between those three systems. Before, there was a very limited difference between the 3DS and 3DS XL: other than size. It was the same resolution, same functionality… now, there’s the 2DS, 3DS, and New 3DS XL, all of which have their own functionality and features. The different price points give it a clear message for consumers. The core audience… we weren’t going to win with them on that decision. But we had to think about expanding the user base, we had to be able to market it and make it easy to pick up for consumers.
Baker also commented on the topic of community feedback online. Regarding this, and how Nintendo’s social media accounts tend to avoid direct engagement with consumers, he said:
I’m there daily, multiple times a day. You have to go there with an open mind. I’d love to get to a point where we have marketing channels where we can promote direct communication with the community, where people comment on stuff and Nintendo can communicate back. That’s my dream. Right now, PR is driving our social media, we’re not actively engaging the community, or very rarely. People have a fascination with Nintendo and want to be close to it and we feed off that excitement. We need to be more active there.
More: Damon Baker, interview, top
Original Zelda: Majora’s Mask dev team was made up of 40 people
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 3 Comments
The original team behind The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask was rather small. Series producer Eiji Aonuma, speaking with Kotaku, revealed that just 40 people worked on the game. He didn’t say how that number compares to Ocarina of Time, but Aonuma did mention that it’s much smaller than the teams Nintendo has on Zelda games these days.
Inazuma Eleven Go Chrono Stones: Thunderflash/Wildfire screenshots
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, Screenshots | 1 Comment
Iwata on Nintendo’s digital business, steady progress being made
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS eShop, News, Wii U eShop | 13 Comments
Now, I would like to explain the progress in our digital business, which will play a very important role in our efforts to expand our business.
These graphs show the download sales transitions in the recent three financial years.
Our download sales as of the end of the second quarter of this fiscal year were a bit lower than those in the previous fiscal year. Yet, the most recent nine-month download sales showed a year-on-year increase of 17 percent to reach 21.1 billion yen.These are the regional download sales breakdowns for the nine months of this fiscal year and the previous one.
You can see the decrease of the ratio of the Japanese market, where there were some hit titles including “StreetPass Mii Plaza” and “Rusty’s Real Deal Baseball” in the last fiscal year. In contrast, the Americas dramatically increased its proportion, followed by Europe.In the U.S., purchases of digital products in general have been widely accepted by consumers. As a result, the ratio of people who purchase and download digital game software is high. As you can see, when we focus on the Americas and create a chart of the download sales percentage of the total software sales, the ratio of the download sales has been increasing largely in the most recent three fiscal years.
Of course, there are some gift-giving opportunities such as holidays and birthdays when packaged software is preferred over the digital version. Yet, as we have been continuing our various efforts in this field, I hope you can see that Nintendo’s digital business is making steady progress. Specifically, not to mention the increased purchasing at Nintendo eShop on Wii U and Nintendo 3DS, our efforts to increase digital purchasing opportunities, such as via online e-commerce sites that we mentioned during the previous Corporate Management Policy Briefing, have been showing results.
Iwata’s full comments on NES/SNES amiibo trials, amiibo cards, 3DS compatibility
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, General Nintendo, News, Wii U | 9 Comments
In contrast to the current figure-shaped amiibo available, we will make amiibo in the form of cards this year as one of our future plans as Mr. Miyamoto mentioned at the Corporate Management Policy Briefing in October.
We are also planning a free-download app for Wii U in which you can enjoy NES and Super NES games with your amiibo in the first half of this year.
With this app, once you tap your amiibo on the NFC area of the GamePad, you will be able to play highlighted scenes of one certain title for NES or Super NES. You cannot play the entire game due to a time limit, but another tap of the amiibo will enable you to try another highlighted scene in the game. We hope that when you tap your amiibo, the quickly changing game scenes will pleasantly surprise you and make you feel as though you have just exchanged a game cartridge.
Even though only Wii U has been compatible with amiibo so far, we are making steady progress on compatibility with the Nintendo 3DS platform. New Nintendo 3DS is equipped with NFC as a standard feature. For existing Nintendo 3DS systems, we will release an external NFC reader/writer in summer this year. On the software side, “Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS” started to support amiibo after a software update in February.
Iwata on amiibo success and sales
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 3 Comments
We also launched amiibo, our new category of products, at the same time as “Super Smash Bros. for Wii U.”
We had already shipped 5.7 million units worldwide by the end of last year.
amiibo is performing especially well in the U.S., Canada and Australia. Some figures are sold out and are being sold at online auctions at premium prices – something which none of us had predicted.I can say that amiibo has kicked off smoothly, as it is a brand-new product category, launched with a much lower recognition rate than other action figure related proposals from other companies.
First of all, amiibo is a series of “game-connectable figures” supported by multiple titles.
“Super Smash Bros.” was the first title to support amiibo, followed by “Mario Kart 8,” “Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker,” and “Kirby and the Rainbow Curse.” We are planning further compatibility in various software titles.
amiibo is offered at a more affordable price range than packaged game titles, so consumers may feel the hurdle has been lowered to buy them one by one without seasonal gaps. In fact, considering the recent sales, amiibo has shown a smaller decline after the year-end sales season in various markets in the world than packaged titles. Also, I think amiibo can contribute to maintaining active use rates of Nintendo platforms by periodically bringing fresh topics to the applicable software through releases of new amiibo figures.
The first amiibo series after “Super Smash Bros.” will be “Super Mario,” which is compatible with “Mario Party 10.”
We are going to add various changes to the appearances of amiibo store shelves including the “Super Smash Bros.” series. As store shelf space is limited, some amiibo may become standard models while others may be replaced once they sell out.
If this is possible, amiibo will maintain a constant presence in stores, which will be beneficial for all Nintendo platforms.This is a pie chart indicating the regional shipment breakdown of amiibo from its launch until the sixth week of this calendar year.
As you can see at a glance, the sector in red representing the U.S. and Canada accounts for a significant portion: 63 percent. The sell-through proportion of the total shipment is approximately 70 percent in each of Japan, U.S. and Canada, and Europe while it reaches 90 percent in Australia.This is the regional top sales ranking chart of each amiibo figure. This does not perfectly represent the popularity or demand for each character because some amiibo were out-of-stock in some regions, but you can certainly see some regional differences in the sales trends.
This chart shows the amiibo figures with a high retail sell-through rate in each region. Some of the amiibo listed here are already sold out and are now difficult to obtain.
It is difficult for us to promise to continuously ship all of the amiibo figures. We will, however, consider additional production in cases such as when an amiibo figure sells out shortly after launch, an amiibo is indispensable to play a certain game, and when we receive a lot of requests for an amiibo figure from consumers and retailers.
Preliminary sales data for Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D, Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, News | 3 Comments
This graph compares our preliminary sales data for “The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D” and “Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate” for the release week (three days for the U.S. and two days for Europe) to the counterparts of their previous works: “The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds” and “Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate.” The sales of the “Monster Hunter” series in the U.S. are not available in the graph because we have not finished compiling the exact data on the titles, which are published by Capcom, and it was a holiday there yesterday. We have heard from Capcom, however, that the initial sales pace of “Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate,” including the special-edition hardware with the title pre-installed, is more than three times as fast as “Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate” in quick estimation. They both had promising starts thanks to strong pre-orders and their highly-acclaimed gameplay.
Wii U’s 2015 software lineup, more titles to take advantage of the GamePad
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii U | 25 Comments
At the Corporate Management Policy Briefing in January a year ago, I explained that we were focusing on enriching the value of the Wii U GamePad, and at E3 in June Mr. Miyamoto showcased a couple of specific examples. In 2015, we will be releasing Wii U titles that fully utilize the GamePad.
This slide shows the Wii U titles that have already been announced for release in 2015. Even though there are more to announce, this slide contains many titles which fully utilize the GamePad.
In addition to Mr. Miyamoto’s GamePad Utilization Project, UGC (User-Generated Content), where players can enjoy other players’ creations, is possible in titles such as “Mario Maker” (temp.). Gameplay that utilizes the GamePad possesses a large amount of potential, and it can further expand the way parents and children have fun together.
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Iwata on Wii U sales, including Mario Kart 8 and Smash
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii U | 3 Comments
We showed a graph at the Corporate Management Policy Briefing to indicate the growth of the Wii U hardware and software sales in the first half of this fiscal year over the corresponding six months a year ago in Japan, the U.S. and in Europe, and this is the same graph but with the data from Australia.
The sales figures of both hardware and software improved due to various reasons, such as the release of “Mario Kart 8” in May and the re-evaluation of the Wii U platform after E3 in June. The strong growth in Australia can be mainly be attributed to “Mario Kart 8” released in May just before Australia’s unique June-July winter sales season, known as the Toy Catalogue Season.We shipped 4.77 million units of “Mario Kart 8” worldwide as of the end of the last calendar year. I can say it marked a very high attach rate if we consider the current installed base of Wii U hardware.
Following the Nintendo 3DS version, we released “Super Smash Bros. for Wii U,” which had shipped 3.39 million units by the end of last year.
As these two classic multiplayer franchises for Nintendo consoles were brought out together,As you can see, the year-on-year comparisons of software sell-through sales in the October-December period show increases in all regions. They especially improved in the U.S. market. We can see larger improvements if we make comparisons among Nintendo titles, especially in the overseas markets.
This is not directly related to this graph, but if we look at the sales figures of only Nintendo titles just in the U.S. for the full calendar year of 2014, the total figure of retail and digital sales represents 175 percent of those for the previous year.On the other hand, hardware sales increased smoothly in overseas markets but decreased in the domestic market. Our analysis of this situation is that in addition to our offers not attracting consumers in the same way as the Premium Family Set bundles did in Japan in 2013, New Nintendo 3DS gained more attention than Wii U, many of the big titles were released for Nintendo 3DS to encourage younger consumers to choose multiple Nintendo 3DS titles, and the priority of purchasing the Wii U console decreased.
Nintendo intends to further promote 3DS’ local multiplayer
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, News | 3 Comments
We are also planning to further promote multiplayer Local Play in order to further accelerate the expansion of Nintendo 3DS in overseas markets.
During the popularization process of handheld gaming systems in Japan, multiplayer Local Play has contributed greatly to the “Pokémon,” “Monster Hunter” and “YOKAI WATCH” franchises.
We believe that multiplayer Local Play has played such a significant role in the expansion of handheld gaming systems for a variety of reasons: it creates a fun environment where users teach one another, games that are actually really fun to play tend to spread by word-of-mouth and for the experience of the super-stable 3D feature of New Nintendo 3DS, seeing is truly believing.
