News from Nintendo’s latest investor’s briefing – 250k on GameStop’s Wii U wait list
Update: Now over, basically. You can see a more comprehensive version of the presentation through the slides posted here.
It’s that time once again! Nintendo is holding its usual investor’s briefing in Japan today, and analyst David Gibson is in attendance as usual.
We’ll round up Gibson’s tweets from the events below. I suppose you can consider this a live-blog of sorts.
– 9 of the top 20 titles in Japan are for the 3DS
– Europe/USA only has 3
– Nintendo doesn’t consider 3DS to be having a significantly positive performance given market is double in Japan
– 3DS has a 57% share of sales in Japan this year
– Only 18% share in Europe
– Only 20% share in the USA
– 3DS XL helped
– 3DS’ seven quarter sales have exceeded the DS
– On Wii U: Nintendo thinks there will be shipment bottleneck to meet demand
– GameStop sold pre-orders in 1.5 days
– 250,000 people are on the retailer’s wait list
– Wii price cut and bundles will drive sales
– Nintendo believes Wii buyer user base is different from Wii U, meaning the two won’t cannibalize each other
– 3DS connection rate increased from 10% to 72% in a year
– Japan and USA exceeded a rate of 80%
– The rate is lower in Europe/Australia, but Nintendo thinks that’s infrastructure-related
– Some retail software in Japan exceeded a rate of 15% from eShop downloads
– New Super Mario Bros. 2 is the highest digital game in the USA with Japan next
– Wii U digital downloads will be available “right after launch” (not clear if it this will literally be at launch)
– 3DS losses improved in the second quarter
– Decided on the Wii U price based on user acceptance of price, not on cogs
– “booked some WiiU costs in 2Q”
– Nintendo considering Nintendo TVii-like service for Japan; a different service is needed in Europe, and Nintendo has plans to announce that in detail in the near future
– “said nintendo’s focus is on game services, synergy with web and increased user satisfaction (rather than other services)”
– Admits smartphones have changed the environment
– Smartphone is “our friend”, not a threat
– Nintendo wants to provide entertainment that exceeds the 85 yen offered in the App Store and do something that can’t be done on smartphones
– Nintendo will collaborate with smartphone companies
– Miiverse fits into these plans with the larger the group of friends the larger the game opportunity
– Anticipating that the mix of third-party games for Wii U will be high initially which contrasts with the Wii
– The Wii saw low third-party support initially, but it gradually improved
– Nintendo has no intention of offering DLC extras for all games since they think it is unhealthy
– Will be done on a game-by-game basis
