Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, Mobile, News | 110 Comments

Nintendo is just about to kick off its Second Quarter Financial Results Briefing (and Corporate Management Policy Briefing). The event should begin at roughly 9 PM ET / 6 PM PT – 30 minutes from now.

We’ll be relaying information collected by the Wall Street Journal as well as any other sources that pop up. You can keep track of the updates below.

Live blog

– Beginning now (9:04 PM ET)
– Kimishima, Miyamoto, and more are there
– Kimishima beginning his presentation

– CEO Tatsumi Kimishima says there are more titles–unannounced–coming this year to promote both Wii U and 3DS during the year-end holiday season

– 70% of “Animal Crossing” fans in Japan are women
– Nintendo will be pushing more games to win more women users this Christmas
– “Super Mario Maker” hit 1 million sales in just three weeks
– Mr. Kimishima notes that like “Splatoon”, a single hit game can change the course of hardware sales

– 400,000 Yarn Yoshi amiibo sold
– amiibo shipments worldwide hit 21.1 million at end-September
– This is up from 14.7 million at end-June

– Nintendo can’t keep up with demand for “Animal Crossing” amiibo cards
– Kimishima apologizes, says will start sales of a new round of shipments today
– 8.6 million amiibo cards sold

– Nintendo’s new membership service will be called “Nintendo Account”
– This will connect hardware users, as well as PC and smart device users
– Nintendo to use a cloud-based data service to transfer game data between mobile games and console games
– Launch date of Nintendo’s smartphone games has been delayed
– Launch will be March 2016, not year-end
– Nintendo eyes global launch, depending on the game
– The new smartphone game will be “Miitomo”
– Free-to-play
– Attractive add-ons that people can pay for
– Other games will be pay-to-download
– Miitomo is the first of five smartphone apps that Nintendo plans to release by March 2017
– In the new Miitomo game, users will design their own avatars, or “Miis,” to communicate with other users
– Executive Shinya Takahashi says that Nintendo will find ways to encourage people who are hesitant to talk to share things about themselves
– Senior Managing Director Shigeru Miyamoto says DeNA will help operate the smartphone games, while Nintendo will focus on ways to guide users to its hardware
– The five smartphone apps won’t soon comprise half of sales
– Nintendo’s goal is to use smart devices to increase the value of its IP, which will help sales of both software and hardware
– On the reason for the delay of the smartphone app, Mr. Kimishima says, is the need for more lead time to fully promote and explain Miitomo
– The company is busy promoting other titles in the pipeline right now,
– It will start promoting Miitomo after the year-end holiday season
– Says this will have little impact on earnings
– Curious about how the DeNA and Nintendo partnership is going. Senior Managing Director Shigeru Miyamoto says DeNA will focus on operation of the games
– Which suggests game design is all Nintendo
– Mr. Miyamoto chimes in on NX
– “We are going to be far more aggressive in using our IP, and not just stop with licensing, as in the past. The first example is Amiibo. We want our IP to better reach more children, and smart devices is just one vehicle.”
– Coy on NX
– Mr. Kimishima: How can we make a completely different kind of game that nobody has ever thought of? It’s the same issue we have always faced.

END

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Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Mobile, News | 18 Comments

We’ve all been waiting a very long time for the first details about Nintendo and DeNA’s debut mobile title. In just a matter of hours, the wait will be over.

Nintendo has confirmed that it will be sharing news about its project in Japan during its latest financial results briefing on Thursday.

“We will provide updates on our project with DeNA tomorrow,” Nintendo president and CEO executive Tatsumi Kimishima said today.

For those of us in North America, we should be hearing something later tonight. That will be in the very early morning over in Europe.

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Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, Mobile, News | 0 comments

Niantic is the main developer behind Pokemon Go. Additionally, Nintendo and The Pokemon Company are heavily involved with the project.

Niantic CEO John Hanke recently spoke with TechCrunch and talked about what it’s like working with the Big N. He said:

“Terrific. It’s an honor to have the support and insights of a company that has brought decades of joy to people through their IP, game design, technology innovation. They share our same values of using innovation and play to bring people together. We have so much respect for Nintendo, as well as The Pokémon Company and of course Google. We couldn’t ask for a better group of companies.”

A couple of days ago, it was announced that Nintendo, The Pokemon Company, and Google are investing $20 million in Niantic. This will allow the developer to continue work on Pokemon Go and expand the company overall.

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Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, Mobile, News | 3 Comments

Pokemon Go developer Niatic announced today that it has raised its Series A financing round from The Pokemon Company Group, Google and Nintendo. As mentioned in today’s announcement, “The companies are investing up to $30 million in Niantic, Inc., which includes an initial $20 million upfront and an additional $10 million conditioned upon achieving certain milestones.” Through the funding, Niatic intends to continue developing Pokemon Go, support the global Ingress community, scale its platform, and release new games.

Niantic CEO John Hank said of today’s news:

“The Pokémon Company, Google and Nintendo are incredible investors and strategic partners to help build the next chapter for Niantic. We will be using this capital to continue the development of Pokémon GO, to evolve and grow Ingress and its thriving global community, and to build out our real-world gaming platform.”

Tsunekazu Ishihara, president and CEO of The Pokémon Company, also stated:

“Pokémon’s strategic investment in Niantic paves the way for a social mobile experience the world has never seen before. The Pokémon Company is committed to partnering with companies like Niantic that share the same spirit of community and innovation.”

Finally, some words from Google’s VP of corporate development, Don Harrison:

“Niantic has shown the great potential of mixing geolocation technology, dynamic storytelling and innovative game design, and we’re excited to continue supporting the team on their journey.”

Source: Pokemon PR

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Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Mobile, News | 17 Comments

We’ve all been waiting quite awhile for the announcement of Nintendo’s debut mobile game. The company said it was “making announcement plans” in August, and an insider recently indicated that news would be coming soon.

There’s still no date yet when it comes to the reveal of the mobile title. Still, DeNA West chief executive officer Shintaro Asako officially went on record at GamesBeat 2015 today and said, “Soon, we should be able to announce the game.”

Asako also reiterated previous statements. As mentioned before, five Nintendo and DeNA games are coming between now and March 2017.

Asako added:

“I can’t say too much about the Nintendo deal. But it’s a really exciting initiative. It’s a really long-term initiative.”

Source, Source

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Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Mobile, News | 4 Comments

Pokemon Go was announced last month. We saw a trailer and received some information, but we don’t really know how the game will play. That should be changing very soon though. Niantic representative Evan Dexter told Slate a couple of weeks ago that more information would be shared in “mid-October”. It’s October 10 today, so an update shouldn’t be too far off.

Dexter said:

“We’re not quite ready to talk in more depth about Pokémon GO than what was revealed in the announcement press release and assets. Come mid-October we’ll be able to start going into more depth about our plans for the game, and about our plans for real world gaming overall.”

Pokemon Go is a new smartphone game coming from The Pokemon Company, Niantic, and Nintendo. It makes use of “real location information to encourage players to search far and wide in the real world to discover Pokemon.” The title is arriving sometime in 2016.

Thanks to Jake for the tip.

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Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Mobile, News | 41 Comments

It shouldn’t be too long now before we get a first look at Nintendo and DeNA’s first mobile game. According to Japanese gaming analyst Dr. Serkan Toto, we’ll be seeing it “soon”. Toto also said that we should “expect the unexpected”.

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Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Mobile, News | 0 comments

The mobile messaging app LINE has been updated with stickers based on Animal Crossing. Pricing is set at $1.99 / €1.99 / 240 yen for the set. You can get a look at all of the different stickers here.

LINE is particularly big in Japan, where it is the country’s top social media platform. Over 600 million users have used the app thus far.

Source 1, Source 2

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Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Mobile, News | 20 Comments

DeNA West CEO Shintaro Asako thinks that there’s a big opportunity for Nintendo’s upcoming mobile games to reach a huge number of people. In an interview with alistdaily, Asako expressed his belief that “at least 150 or 200 million people” will try out these offerings when they’re ready for launch.

Asako told the site:

“Hundreds of millions of people have bought Nintendo consoles. Those are people who decided to spend a minimum of $200 just to get access to Nintendo IP. That number is already twice as big as the Candy Crush total user base. Not only that, every single person buying Nintendo devices spends an average of about $100 per year on software. So I have no question that when Nintendo’s mobile games come out, at least 150 or 200 million people will try it. These people are super core Nintendo fans who used to spending $150 to $250 just to access the content. Let’s say only 10% end up playing, and then those users pay $3 a month, that’s still perhaps a $60 million dollar a month game.”

alistdaily also asked about the marketing strategy he thinks will be necessary for Nintendo’s mobile games. Regarding this, Asako said:

“We know Nintendo IP is powerful, but we need to let people know the game is coming out. From that perspective I think mass marketing makes sense for Nintendo games. Usually you have more on digital marketing and later on the mass marketing kicks in, because you don’t want to start mass marketing until you’ve evaluated LTV (long-term value), because otherwise you might be wasting money. When you have strong IP like Nintendo you can kind of predict what kind of installs you can get, so to reach the level of mass-marketing isn’t that much of a risk.”

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Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Mobile, News | 17 Comments

During a press conference last night, Pokemon Go was announced for smartphones. We heard that it was on track for a release next year, but now we have slightly more information.

The latest Ingress report reveals that Pokemon Go will be receiving a beta in winter 2015. Additionally, the title now has a more specific “early 2016” launch window. We’ll be receiving more information within the next few weeks supposedly.

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