Nintendo is sometimes called out for relying on past franchises and recycling IPs. President Satoru Iwata addressed this belief during a investor’s briefing Q&A last week, noting that with series such as Mario and Pokemon, “we are trying to push the boundaries every time we develop a series title.” He added that “those who assume that Nintendo lacks innovation might be making judgments by looking at our game titles without actually experiencing them.”
Here are Iwata’s thoughts in full:
“…One thing I would like to add, though, is that it might be true that Mario and Pokémon are franchises with long histories and tradition behind them, but we are trying to push the boundaries every time we develop a series title. In other words, the reason Pokémon has been continuously popular for about 15 years and Mario for almost 30 years now is that each sequel has something novel. So I frankly think that those who assume that Nintendo lacks innovation might be making judgments by looking at our game titles without actually experiencing them. Without ongoing innovation, even Mario and Pokémon would have lost their popularity long before.”
Satoru Iwata commented on the launches on Wii and 3DS during an investor’s briefing last week, explaining how Wii Sports was critical in spreading the word. The 3DS, on the other hand, wouldn’t be able to resonate as well since “consumers could not experience 3D unless they actually took it in their hands” and advertising couldn’t convey the proper messages.
With Wii U, Nintendo is more than satisfied with pre-orders thus far, but is concerned about supporting the system in the months ahead. So this time around, the company pushed back some of its games intended for launch in order to spread out releases.
Iwata explained:
We now have the official quote straight from Satoru Iwata who confirmed an upcoming Nintendo Direct for Wii U’s Miiverse. Iwata says that a presentation will be shown prior to the console’s launch.
“As it would take me a long time to elaborate on ‘Miiverse’ here, we are currently preparing a Nintendo Direct video to explain about it in detail before the launch of Wii U.”
Nintendo isn’t making a profit with Wii U at launch. That almost never happens. Nintendo almost always sells its hardware for a profit, and maintains a philosophy of making money off its products.
So here’s the million dollar question: when exactly will the Wii U become profitable? Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata can’t say for sure. But while speaking with investor’s at a briefing last week, he said that he’s “confident that in the next fiscal year we can improve our Wii U business to a level where the platform business as a whole”.
I do not yet have all the necessary information to be able to say exactly when Wii U hardware will start to be sold at a profit. If you just look at this fiscal year, I do not expect Wii U to make a big contribution to our profits since the software sales will be rather limited due to a rather limited installed base of the hardware and, even as a whole, we cannot be optimistic about their combined profit contribution either when we take into consideration the fact that we need to invest a lot into our advertising activities at first. However, in the next fiscal year, we will have a larger installed base. We will have a richer array of software and manufacturing costs will also decrease. Therefore I believe that, as opposed to simply asking when we will be able to sell Wii U at a profit, the focus should be on constructing a healthy profit structure for the business as a whole by launching a sufficient amount of quality software at fast enough a pace for our home console, on which we can look to achieve a higher tie ratio* than on handheld systems, and selling as many units of software as possible. I believe this is a goal we can achieve in the next fiscal year. While I cannot say exactly when the Wii U hardware will become profitable, I am confident that in the next fiscal year we can improve our Wii U business to a level where the platform business as a whole (when we include both the hardware and the software) makes solid contributions to our profits.
Nintendo is partnering with a number of VOD partners such as Netflix for its US Nintendo TVii service for Wii U. There are also other companies in talks with the publisher.
President Satoru Iwata told investors last week that a Nintendo TVii-like service could head to Europe and Japan. Iwata said they’ll be “taking into account how people watch television in each region, and I believe I will be able to share more details in the not-so-distant future.”
One other important note, which we’ll highlight here:
“Also I regret having to have used Nintendo’s limited game development resources in order to provide non-gaming features on Wii. This time, we are working to see how we can enrich our services without having to rely on Nintendo’s internal development resources, and because the Wii U system itself is now fairly powerful, I believe that standard web technologies can be applied to achieve a sufficient degree of speed and convenience, and we will deploy our services in this fashion in the future.”
Head past the break for Iwata’s full comments.
A few third-parties are taking a big gamble on Wii U. Ubisoft, for instance, is readying a full slate of titles. Warner Bros. is also preparing a variety of different games.
These publishers are probably hoping that they’ll find a larger success on their core titles compared to the Wii, which was a platform notorious for seeing poor third-party sales and eventually experienced a lack of support.
Thus far, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata is encouraged by third-party support on Wii U. When asked about third-parties during the company’s most recent investor briefing Q&A, Iwata explained:
Let me first explain how software publishers in the video game industry are seeing the Wii U system. Naturally there are publishers that simply fell in love with the possibilities of Wii U, and as exemplified in “ZombiU” by Ubisoft, some are developing Wii U-exclusive titles. In addition to this, there are multi-platform titles that nevertheless take advantage of the Wii U GamePad or the Wii U system itself, and at the same time, there are purely multi-platform titles, so it is true that our publishers have varying degrees of commitment. However, the fact that we were able to announce such a rich launch lineup of games, particularly from overseas software publishers, does give us confidence. While the future of dedicated gaming platforms is now widely discussed, as the graphs for the U.S. market justify, I believe that this lineup proves that Nintendo’s vision is shared by many, and there is active support for that too. My aim is to set a successful example towards and after the end of the year that rewards the investment our third-party publishers put into their titles and will then create a chain of other successful titles. Establishing this kind of example at an early stage is crucial since it gives others the incentive to follow suit, while failing to do so casts a dark shadow over their future prospects of the platform. We should therefore not be content with having a good game lineup. It is important to produce examples of success from these titles.
The Official Nintendo Magazine produced the video above showing a number of size comparisons to previous Nintendo hardware. We also get another look at the console in general.
Animal Crossing: New Leaf will likely have downloadable content, just like City Folk (which is still giving out items). Fortunately though, any extra DLC will be free.
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, speaking during the company’s latest investor’s briefing Q&A, confirmed that the game will have no paid DLC. As Kotaku reports, Iwata feels that “the power of money could not only impact gameplay, but change it, perhaps even making the experience”. Iwata called this “unwholesome”.
Iwata ended up telling investors:
“That sort of element [paid DLC] is absolutely not being added.”
