Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa had a few interesting comments about Switch Online during the company’s latest financial briefing.
Furukawa started out by stating that the service “had a good launch”. Nintendo’s current objective “is on boosting the appeal of the service” and “further enhance the content of the service for the subscriber base to reach a certain size”. Using the NES-exclusive controllers as an example, Furukawa added that Nintendo has to “develop the service beyond being merely digital, in ways play to our strengths as a company that operates an integrated hardware and software business.”
During a recent financial results briefing, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa commented on the early success of Dragalia Lost.
Furukawa stated out by saying that the mobile game is “off to a good start” before adding that “it seems to have found a certain number of consumers who play it continuously.” The game has plenty of players who are Cygames fans in Japan while those in the United States are “predominantly Nintendo fans.” Nintendo is also seeing strong daily sales and in-game sales “stand apart from what we have seen with past applications.”
For Switch’s initial year, Nintendo came out with big Switch games month after month. Zelda: Breath of the Wild got things started, with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, ARMS, Splatoon 2, Fire Emblem Warriors, Super Mario Odyssey, and Xenolade Chronicles 2 releasing in subsequent months.
2018 has had its own fair share of games, but you could argue that the lineup has been a bit quieter – especially during the first half of the year. This was brought up during Nintendo’s latest financial results briefing, with president Shuntaro Furukawa said that it “takes a long time” to make games and “there will inevitably be periods during the hardware lifecycle when we are unable to release major new titles.” As such, the company needs to use different methods to fill in those gaps, such as “continuing to promote the sale of titles released in the previous year, release add-on content, highlight the appeal of hardware itself, and use services like Nintendo Switch Online to keep the utilization ratio of the hardware up.”
A year after launch, Nintendo has a few Switch games that continue to sell. The likes of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and Super Mario Odyssey still regularly appear on the charts.
Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa described these titles during a recent financial results briefing as “hardware drivers”. He added that Nintendo intends to “incorporate add-on content and other factors that will keep these titles in the spotlight, so they will continue to sell alongside the hardware.”
During Nintendo’s financial results briefing last week, president Shuntaro Furukawa was initially asked a flurry of questions. Topics included the company’s strategy for Switch this holiday, the user base that will popularize the console, and how pre-orders are going for Pokemon: Let’s Go, Pikachu / Eevee and Smash Bros. Ultimate.
Here’s Furukawa’s full response:
Over the past several weeks, Nintendo has been cycling through its regular events in Super Mario Run. The latest one is now live.
As of today, the appearance rate of 5-star items in the Bonus Game will be increased. This extra incentive will be live until November 17.
Nintendo held its financial results briefing for the second quarter of the current fiscal year last week. As always, there was a Q&A session with inventors after the briefing. Nintendo has now provided an official transcript and English translation of the Q&A session, which you can find here. As is most often the case, don’t expect any breaking news from this, but there are a couple of interesting tidbits and insights into Nintendo’s business philosophy.
We’re slowly but surely approaching the release of Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes on January 18th. Today, Nintendo revealed a special little tidbit about the game: Travis can wear a variety of t-shirts in the game, and many of them feature indie games. The picture above shows shirts themed after Golf Story, Hollow Knight, Dandara, Bit.Trip Runner and many more.
The Super Smash Blog update got a second update today, which once again details Spirits. The accompanying screenshots also reveal some new Spirits.
There are two kinds of spirits. Primary spirits boost the physical abilities of the fighter you equip them to, while support spirits provide special skills. Try out different combinations to power up your fighters!
Atlus have uploaded a lengthy gameplay video of Persona Q2 to their Youtube channel. The video contains footage from near the beginning of the game, showing the Persona 5 crew in the first dungeon of the game:
