Nintendo of Canada on Yo-kai Watch’s popularity in North America, 3DS ports, Nintendo Directs
Nintendo held a Yo-kai Watch 2 event with Level-5 and Hasbro this past weekend in Toronto. GameSkinny attended the event, and was able to speak with Nintendo of Canada communications manager Andrew Collins. Collins commented on how Yo-kai Watch has become popular in North America, the 3DS versions of Yoshi’s Woolly World and Super Mario Maker, and Nintendo Directs.
You can read up on GameSkinny’s interview here for some other topics. We’ve posted a few excerpts below.
On Yo-kai Watch’s popularity in North America…
Andrew: Right. So as you probably know, Yo-Kai Watch is already very popular in Japan right now. When we first launched the game in North America the game started off slow as not many people knew about the game. However, similar to Japan, the games and merchandise really took off after the TV show aired in North America. Almost overnight the sales skyrocketed, and the series has been doing really well ever since.
On Yoshi’s Woolly World and Super Mario Maker for 3DS…
Andrew: I think it’s important that people understand that both the Yoshi title and Super Mario Maker are not simply being ported to the 3DS. The teams responsible for those games are actually building entirely different games for the handheld console. While the games will be similar in terms of gameplay, the actual games will have new features and changes made to them to accommodate the hardware. A good example of this is in Yoshi’s Woolly World for the 3DS where Poochy will have a bigger role than he did in the Wii U version, or how Super Mario Maker will be much easier to share levels with people while on the go.
On future Nintendo Directs…
Andrew: Nintendo Directs are actually presented to the communications teams much closer to their release. What I can tell you is that we have a to-be-announced Nintendo Direct that will be discussing the new Animal Crossing: New Leaf update coming out soon. I think it’s important that we show this to the fans as we do hope to bring new content to older games in the future.
