Iwata doesn’t see any drastic change with China’s game console ban
Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 0 comments
A report surfaced from China Daily last month suggesting that China could finally be ending its 12-year ban on game consoles. But when one investor brought up this topic during Nintendo’s financial results briefing, president Satoru Iwata indicated that the company doesn’t believe the “situation has actually changed drastically.”
Having said that, Iwata would be open to the opportunities present in China. If Nintendo were to receive official information about a change to the situation, Nintendo “will make an announcement from inside China.”
“Regarding China, we certainly saw some articles the other day. On the other hand, we do not think that the situation has actually changed drastically. Of course, if a drastic change is made, there will be some opportunities for us. We have been preparing for that, but we have not obtained any confirmation of the recent media reports. In the future, if we receive any official confirmation in this regard, the company will make an announcement from inside China. At this point in time, please just understand that there will be some options we may be able to take if the situation has actually changed.”
Iwata on the success of digital sales, retail has issues but not ditching packaged games
Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, General Nintendo, News, Wii U | 0 comments
Nintendo has seen great success with digital releases thus far. In Japan, almost 800,00 copies of Animal Crossing: New Leaf were sold through the 3DS eShop.
Now, even though Nintendo is experiencing positive growth in the digital space, the company has no plans to ditch packaged games. Iwata did, however, acknowledge that there are issues at retail during the company’s latest financial results briefing.
Iwata noted that there are difficulties in forecasting sales. In the end, retailers are typically left with a surplus of stock “which ends up being sold at a huge discount or, in contrast, software shortages could cause lost sales opportunities for retailers.” This unfortunately leads to hesitation on the part of retailers since they are “less willing to accept the inventory risk.”
This shows the digital download sales transitions. For the current fiscal year, we have just finished the third quarter, but the digital sales have already reached 11.1 billion yen so far, and it is certain that in this fiscal year we will see our largest digital download sales. Another peak in digital sales you can see around the center of this graph is when Wii was widespread and Nintendo DSi had just been launched. In spite of the fact that the current installed base of Nintendo 3DS is still much smaller than how popular Wii was back then, we are already seeing the growth in digital download sales mainly for Nintendo 3DS, which, I believe, is an encouraging trend. I have no intention of simply replacing the packaged business with the digital download one, but it is also true that there are several issues with the current packaged software distribution business. For example, before launching a software title, no one can precisely forecast how many units of software will sell in the market. Everyone develops and launches a software title with the hope to make it a smash hit, but when it comes to the actual sales in the market, even the most seasoned marketers cannot forecast the figures accurately. As a result, retailers are often left with surplus stock, which ends up being sold at a huge discount or, in contrast, software shortages could cause lost sales opportunities for retailers. With these kinds of issues becoming increasingly challenging, retailers are less willing to accept the inventory risk. In this situation, even when a developer has created software with high potential to become a smash hit, it is likely to fall short of its real sales potential. Or, even though a quality software title can successfully attract the interest of potential fans, making and shipping just a little more than the actual demand can lead to a big discount in the marketplace and, thus, destroy the game’s brand. We have seen repeated cases of these. When I discussed with Shinji Hatano (Senior Managing Director, General Manager of Marketing Division) the company’s endeavors with the POSA card to expand our digital download sales outlets to retail shops, he stressed that it would provide distributors with a huge opportunity to solve the existing issues. A fairly large volume of “Animal Crossing: New Leaf” for Nintendo 3DS was sold in the form of a POSA card, which is activated only when it goes through POS registers at retailers and therefore the retailers do not have to shoulder the physical inventory risk. The growing sales of the POSA version of this game must have helped retailers see the business opportunity for video games with such a business structure. We therefore expect that our publishers may be interested in selling POSA cards for some titles they are publishing as download-only titles and that they will want to make more games available in POSA card format. Although convenience stores have limited shelf space to spare for a number of video game POSA cards, retailers with more shelf space might expand the areas designated to the video game POSA cards. They might even educate their customers who are not familiar with digital download software. We can expect to see a number of new possibilities. We expect our digital distribution to increase in importance and become an important revenue source.
Iwata: Animal Crossing has appeal overseas
Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, DS, General Nintendo, News | 0 comments
During Nintendo’s latest financial results briefing, an investor told president Satoru Iwata that he believes Animal Crossing: Wild World “was not so well appreciated” in the west in terms of sales. This isn’t so, Iwata said.
Wild World sold at least five million copies overseas. This may not seem like a huge figure compared to Japan’s success, “but there are already some core fans of the Animal Crossing series overseas too.”
Iwata explained:
You mentioned that the reception of “Animal Crossing: Wild World” was not so good overseas. The sales of this game have reached no less than five million copies overseas. There are few companies whose result of selling more than five million copies of a product is considered not up to scratch. It is true that the sales figure overseas, meaning in the U.S. and Europe, is relatively small compared to the fact that the number of sales has surpassed five million copies only in Japan, but there are already some core fans of the Animal Crossing series overseas too. When we announced “Animal Crossing: New Leaf” through our Japanese Nintendo Direct presentation, many consumers worldwide viewed it on the Internet and we received a lot of requests from overseas consumers who wanted to play it as soon as possible. We would like to first promote the attractions of this game to such a core fan base.
Iwata: Unified console and handheld division could lead to more platforms
Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News, Podcast Stories | 0 comments
Nintendo will soon be unifying its console and handheld divisions into one entity. By doing so, the company “would like to integrate software development methods, operating systems, and built-in software and software assets for each platform so that we can use them across different machines.”
Satoru Iwata also teased an interesting scenario during Nintendo’s financial results briefing last week. He said: “if we manage to integrate our platforms successfully, we may in fact be able to make more platforms.”
Iwata’s full comments on cloud gaming
Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 0 comments
We posted a paraphrased version of Satoru Iwata’s comments on cloud gaming, but I thought it’d be worthwhile to post the full (and official) translation. You can find his remarks below.
The term “cloud gaming” is one of the words we have lately heard so often, but I would like people to understand that there are certain things that cloud gaming cannot achieve. A cloud is an attempt to process information online on a server, as opposed to doing so on individual machines in the hands of the users. What this implies is, since the time to transmit data over an Internet connection is never negligible, there is always some latency before you receive the result of your input. Of course, there are types of games on which delays have no effect. In such instances, it may perhaps make sense to have an input means as well as the ability to display images at hand and let all the information be processed on a server. On the other hand, for some highly interactive games, action games in particular, the time required to reflect the push of a button on the screen is critical and the frame rate (the number of times a screen can be updated in a given second) determines the fluidity of the movements. This means that there are some types of games that can be put on the Internet and others that cannot. By the laws of physics, it always takes some time to transmit data, and given the current level of Internet technology, there is bound to be some latency during the processes of a server receiving data, producing images instantly and sending them back. There are many things that cloud gaming cannot do by design, but this fact has not been communicated well to the public, and I find it strange that many people claim that cloud gaming is the future.
MercurySteam would consider HD version of Castlevania – Mirror of Fate
Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, General Nintendo, News, Wii U | 0 comments
At the moment, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate is a 3DS exclusive. That could change in the future, however.
MercurySteam producer David Cox revealed to CVG that all of the game’s assets were made in HD. That includes the textures, levels, and models. But to have everything fit on the 3DS, the team shrunk things down. Cox said that MercurySteam does “have an HD version of the game sitting there in a computer somewhere.”
“We created everything in high definition – all the textures, all the levels, high-poly models, everything – and we kind of shrunk it all down into the 3DS. Then we lost bones from characters, you know, we dropped the resolution of the textures and everything to make it fit. At MercurySteam we have an HD version of the game sitting there in a computer somewhere.”
This new information begs the question: could we ever seen an HD version of Mirror of Fate? Cox is more than open to the possibility:
“Absolutely, yeah. We would consider it. We want as many people to play it as possible. Obviously we have an exclusivity deal with Nintendo right now though and they’ve been very supportive of the product.”
SEGA has “great stuff coming up this year” for Sonic
Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 0 comments
Hedgehog Day is done and over with. The holiday for Sonic fans took place yesterday, but SEGA didn’t make any new announcements about its classic franchise.
That being said, it does sound like SEGA is cooking up a few things for the Blue Blur this year. The company teased on its blog that it has “got some great stuff coming up this year, but we’re not ready to talk about it just yet.”
Resident Evil: Revelations HD not a direct port, why it’s coming to consoles, more
Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, General Nintendo, News, Wii U | 0 comments
Resident Evil: Revelations producer Masachika Kawata fielded a few questions about Capcom’s new HD version in an interview with Nowgamer. Kawata commented on the game’s new aspects, why it’s being brought to consoles, and more. There’s general talk about the Resident Evil series, too.
Head past the break for the full Q&A.
Iwata: Cloud gaming not the future
Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News, Podcast Stories | 0 comments
Satoru Iwata told investors at a financial results briefing earlier this week that Nintendo does not believe “cloud gaming is the future”. Although he acknowledged that it has its advantages (and disadvantages), Nintendo is “trying to work hard on a future where gaming only consoles are not gone.”
An unofficial translation from the meeting reads:
“There are things you can do with cloud gaming and there are things you cant do. We don’t agree that cloud gaming is the future and we are trying to work hard on a future where gaming only consoles are not gone. Unified platforms are for us not platforms that are one but rather platforms that have the same development architecture. This also means that there could be more platforms.”
Shigeru Miyamoto, who was also in attendance, spoke about the challenge of creating new development environments for Wii U and 3DS:
“We needed to create new development environments for Wii U and 3DS unlike Wii which reused the GameCube architecture. We are unifying our development teams to accommodate this challenge and minimize the losses while preparing the shift. I think handhelds and consoles will coexist as the aim is different.
Activision registers new Skylanders domains
Posted on 11 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 0 comments
Activision seems to be making preparations for a new Skylanders announcement.
On Wednesday, the publisher registered the domains SkylandersKaosAlliance.com, SkylandersNanoForce.com, SkylandersSuperForce.com and SkylandersSwapForce.com.
The Skylanders IP has resulted in annual releases for Activision. Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure launched in 2011, followed by Skylanders Giants last year. You may remember that Activision announced Giants nearly a year ago today. It was officially revealed on February 7, 2012. Could an announcement for a third Skylanders be just a few days away?
