Nintendo France – more unannounced third-party games for Switch coming, mobile talk, amiibo is here to stay

In that case, why did you remain so discrete on 3DS projects in the Spotlight?

It’s hard to focus on everything. Still, Reggie showed the New 2DS XL, which is a use innovation. It will be released with a new challenge for the French team: Miitopia. We will have Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon in November, a Mario & Luigi … in short, a busier lineup than last year. The priority in our communication sequence is on the Nintendo Switch.

Since we’re talking about the Switch, the paid subscription service being pushed back to 2018 gives the feeling that Nintendo is still one step behind on online features…

It could be, but we claim our difference. It’s vital, and what works elsewhere won’t necessarily work for us. We like to experiment, we’re always listening. Sometimes we take “corrective actions” when we feel that we’re not ready.

The great trends of the time seem to consist of 4K gaming, eSports, and finally games as a service. By choosing to bet on your difference, aren’t you afraid of falling behind?

We’re convinced that social, competitive gaming suits us well. Nintendo’s DNA lies in offering something original; and what are eSports? They’re a competition arena for a couple of trending games. Is it about sponsorship? Advertising? It’s about business. What we’re interested in is players having fun competing and exchanging with each other. Nintendo has always been present in competitions, with world tournaments on Smash Bros., Mario Kart, and even Splatoon. It’s got huge potential. But does the form have to be a stadium under a Coca-Cola sponsorship contract?

We saw the big Splatoon arenas in the Switch announcement trailer. Is Nintendo really not planning to invest in this area, with an official league for instance?

We like players to be able to meet without having to pay for it. At Japan Expo or Paris Games Week, players come to our arenas with their consoles – it’s completely free. We did the French Mario Kart championship like this, and again with Smash Bros. Making meetups easier? Sure. Supervising them? That is not necessarily our role.

Regarding mobile initiatives now, there’s a feeling it’s not quite perfect yet. How would you explain this? Is it a lack of experience…

(Interrupting) I think we can look at things from another angle. We’ve learned a lot from Pokémon GO which is our main success in this area, even though it is a collaboration. It allowed the sales to accelerate like never before in the Pokémon franchise. Incidentally, Nintendo’s spurt last year probably goes back to Pokémon GO. We need to see the market in a less partitioned way: digital experts reproach us for not being digital, physical game experts tell us that digital is going to devour everything, and we observe that a mobile app can have a positive effect on the whole of our activity. And nobody had expected this. Our studies show that on a franchise such as Pokémon, there are nostalgic players as well as newcomers from Pokémon GO.

Fire Emblem Heroes also works well, even if the audience is more modest; the players are very committed. Our greatest strength is to be able to experiment without pressure. Of course, not everything works as well as we’d like it to: Super Mario Run is below our expectations, we didn’t convert our try like we meant to. But unlike others, when something’s wrong, we choose to learn and fix it. Animal Crossing, for example, has incredible virality. An audience that is probably more female, a different experience. We can try, we can fail, we can fix things and start over.

One success, however, would be the NES Mini. Is it an initiative worth renewing with a Super NES Mini?

I have nothing to announce but indeed, we can’t remain indifferent to the success of the NES Mini. Incidentally, French trackers hadn’t been recording its sales – they didn’t know in which category it belonged. They had left it in a “nostalgia console” section, but we told them that the success was so important that it was strange not to include it in the French video game market. It is a strong and fun gaming experience, our Proust’s madeleine (Translator’s note: a memory trigger).

Yes, [renewing] makes sense, but when? It’s our role to think about this. And nothing is set in stone.

Let’s talk about a subject that is dear to me: amiibo. We saw a lot of announcements at E3 about these toys. Yet you can notice in retail shelves that a lot of them are discounted. Isn’t there a risk of overproduction?

I have to rectify. We have very healthy stock levels here in France. There is constant replenishment: for instance, the latest Breath of the Wild amiibo, and the upcoming ones for Metroid and Super Mario Odyssey. We don’t see any issue with consumption. Unlike some competing products on the market, the amiibo line is here to stay. Developers are starting to have a firm grasp of them. Take the Splatoon amiibo: you will never see a price drop for them. The same goes for Zelda. No doubt. We needed to break the mold in terms of game-toy association in order to go beyond the collecting aspect.

To conclude, would you say that Japan Expo is as powerful as E3 in affecting the public?

Without a doubt, in France, Japan Expo is a monument. We’re very close to the teams behind Japan Expo; they do a remarkable job spotlighting Japanimation, which has a very wide audience in France. It’s a very strong moment of entertainment with conferences and surprises this year, like when Miyamoto came (Editor’s note: in 2016). But E3 is important, and Paris Games Week is important. So our philosophy is to adapt the content to suit the actual offer. We, as players, are not very patient with video games. We want to be surprised, amazed, we want novelty. These conventions will bring out the creativity of our developers.

Massive thanks to Kyrio for helping with this translation!

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