Late Nintendo president Satoru Iwata announced the company’s entry into the Quality of Life field in January 2014. A few months later, he said that a sleep device would be released within the 2015 fiscal year, but nothing ever materialized.
Tatsumi Kimishima, who took over for Iwata as Nintendo’s new president, provided another update on the device intended to monitor sleep and fatigue during a press conference this week. Interestingly, there is now noticeable doubt surrounding it, and it’s unclear if we’ll ever see it on the market.
Kimishima said:
“It hasn’t reached a level where it can be sold as a Nintendo product. If it could be released, we’d release it. If it’s not we need to consider further how to deal with it.”
Nintendo last hoped to have the device ready by this March. However, it now sounds like they’re unsure if this can be made into a product or not.
This week’s Famitsu scans are now available. Highlighted games include Assassination Classroom: Assassin Training Plan, Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 3, Haikyuu!!: Cross Team Match, and Shin Megami Tensei IV Final (plus a Smash Bros. ad). Scans of each title can be found in the gallery below.
Following the news coming out of Nintendo’s financial results briefing yesterday, Nintendo of America has issued a press release confirming launch details for Miitomo (and a tiny bit on My Nintendo). Find the information below.
Spark One-of-a-Kind Conversations with Friends; App Launches in March Alongside My Nintendo Rewards Program
REDMOND, Wash., Feb. 3, 2016 – Nintendo’s first app made exclusively for smart devices, Miitomo, will launch in North America in March for both iOS and Android phones and tablets. Today, Nintendo outlined the steps that fans can take to be among the first to get in on the social fun.
Starting Feb. 17, people will be able to pre-register for Miitomo by signing up for the new Nintendo Account service using their existing email, social media accounts or current Nintendo Network IDs. People who pre-register will be among the first to be notified about the availability of Miitomo when it launches in March. Nintendo will offer a special Miitomo bonus to anyone who signs up for a Nintendo Account between Feb. 17 and launch. Miitomo is a social experience that uses Nintendo’s Mii characters, which first debuted on the Wii console, to engage friends in a lighthearted and welcoming environment. Users can spark fun conversations and learn more about each other by answering questions such as “What song has been stuck in your head lately?”, “Do you believe in aliens?”, or even “If you saw a nose hair sticking out of your friend’s nose, what would you do?” Users can also easily take and share photos featuring their Mii with the Miifoto feature. Nintendo’s new My Nintendo rewards program will launch alongside Miitomo in March, and will be able to connect with the app.
The latest Japanese hardware sales from Media Create are as follows:
Vita – 45,114
PS4 – 32,557
New 3DS LL – 22,593
Wii U – 8,931
New 3DS – 4,978
3DS – 3,298
PS3 – 1,993
3DS LL – 558
Xbox One – 92
For comparison’s sake, here are the hardware numbers from last week:
New 3DS LL – 31,452
PS4 – 24,441
Vita – 14,999
Wii U – 11,298
New 3DS – 4,715
3DS – 2,813
PS3 – 1,671
3DS LL – 697
Xbox One – 52
And here are the software charts:
1. [PSV] Dragon Quest Builders – 178,016 / NEW
2. [PS4] Dragon Quest Builders – 141,369 / NEW
3. [WIU] Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash – 55,331 / NEW
4. [PS3] Dragon Quest Builders – 53,154 / NEW
5. [PSV] Uta no Prince-sama: Music 3 – 51,289 / NEW
6. [PS4] Yakuza: Kiwami – 20,260 / 123,516
7. [PS4] Sangokushi 13 – 20,101 / NEW
8. [PS3] Yakuza: Kiwami – 17,591 / 78,019
9. [3DS] Monster Hunter X – 17,023 / 2,661,523
10. [PS3] TV Anime Idolm@ster Cinderella G4U! Pack Vol.8 – 15,720 / NEW
11. [PS3] Sangokushi 13 – 15,431 / NEW
12. [3DS] Hyrule Warriors Legends – 15,174 / 69,653
13. [WIU] Splatoon – 13,256 / 1,228,409
14. [PSV] The Asterisk War: The Academy City on the Water Houaa Kenran – 12,436 / NEW
15. [3DS] Yo-kai Watch Busters – 11,135 / 2,183,566
16. [PSV] Minecraft: PlayStation Vita Edition – 10,733 / 642,224
17. [3DS] Monster Strike – 10,263 / 779,754
18. [PS4] Just Cause 3 – 8,928 / 42,588
19. [WIU] Super Mario Maker – 6,327 / 784,211
20. [PSV] Mobile Suit Gundam Extreme VS Force – 7,429 / 137,877
This information comes from Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima…
As we have previously discussed, we are aiming to further advance our “gaming population expansion” strategy and aim to “grow the population who have access to Nintendo IP (intellectual properties).” To achieve this goal, our increasing the number of My Nintendo members will be one of the most important missions.
Accordingly, after the release of Miitomo in March, we will steadily release game apps for smart devices.
Because we want as many people as possible to enjoy Miitomo, we have designed it so that creating a Nintendo Account and becoming a My Nintendo member is not required. But when we release smart device apps with our popular IP in the future, we will design them in a way that will encourage consumers to become My Nintendo members.
For each app, we will review and select the most appropriate payment system by taking into consideration the nature of each IP. But we are thinking of mainly deploying free-to-start type apps as we hope as many people as possible among hundreds of millions of people all around the world who own smart devices will experience our apps.
We are intending to significantly increase My Nintendo membership by all these measures.
We would like to set “100 million My Nintendo members globally” as our initial milestone. Since this number should be considered as a check point, we will make efforts in order to achieve this number at the earliest possible timing.
We believe that the bigger the size of My Nintendo, the greater the enjoyment and value we will be able to provide to our customers.
This information comes from Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima…
Launching alongside My Nintendo, we will release Miitomo as our first smart device application.
Miitomo is an entertainment application which turns communication among friends into a form of “play.” After the release, we hope many will wonder why this sort of app had never existed before.
In Miitomo, your “Mii” look-alike character appears as your “alternate self” within your smart device.
All of you must have had the enjoyable experience of being prompted by a friend to talk about something that you might not normally bring up in the course of your conversation. Mii characters facilitate this kind of social play structure with Miitomo.
Unlike most communication apps, with which you are supposed to proactively dispatch your message, in Miitomo, talkative Mii characters will automatically spark unique conversations and help friends connect on random, fun and light-hearted topics.
I believe you will experience a fresh new feeling with Miitomo.
More than 200 million Mii characters have been created around the world and have been appreciated by many people, regardless of age, gender, country or region.
Miis are unique characters who act in very “Nintendo-like” ways with rich facial expressions.
Also, Miitomo comes with a feature called “Miifoto” with which you can create and share various pictures with Mii characters.
The pictures created with Miifoto can be stored on your smart device and can be shared with various social media networks, so these pictures can be used beyond gaming.
Quite a few consumers have used their Mii in their profile picture of various social networks. We hope more people will enjoy Miitomo to use Mii in such fashions as well.
Miitomo is an application that is highly reliant on language, as it introduces a fun new style of communication. We think there will be a variety of different ways that people in different countries speaking different languages will enjoy this app.
As such, we will start by releasing Miitomo in these 16 countries, and as we receive feedback from our consumers about their experiences and establish customer support structures, we will gradually increase the number of available countries for Miitomo.
Before Miitomo is released in March, Nintendo will start accepting the pre-registration of the app from February 17.
You will need your Nintendo Account to pre-register.
Anyone who pre-registers for Miitomo will receive Platinum Points via My Nintendo, and will be notified on Miitomo’s launch day so that they can download immediately.
We will start this pre-registration for Miitomo not just in Japan but in all 16 countries where the app will initially be released.
(Note: Outside Japan, Nintendo Account registration starts simultaneously on February 17, with the start of pre-registration of Miitomo, in all the countries where My Nintendo services will be formally started in March.)
Miitomo will be released on iOS and Android.
We will release Miitomo in Japan in mid-March and in the other 15 countries by the end of March.
The services of My Nintendo that I mentioned earlier today will also be formally started simultaneously along with the release of Miitomo.
This information comes from Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima…
And now, I would like to dicuss Nintendo’s new membership service and our new business on smart devices.
We will globally start the new membership service called “My Nintendo” this March.
My Nintendo is Nintendo’s comprehensive service that all consumers with a Nintendo Account can access.
My Nintendo will offer services which make Nintendo’s game experiences even more fun and more convenient, and that provide enhanced value for members.
We are planning to provide similar services for the new entertainment experiences that Nintendo will offer beyond gaming in the future.
This information comes from Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima…
Next, I would like to talk about the status of download sales.
This graph shows download sales from the latest three fiscal years through the third quarter of this fiscal year.
Total download sales from the first quarter to the third quarter totaled 30.5 billion yen. This increase is mainly due to add-on content inside games.
Without including the upcoming fourth quarter results, we are already close to achieving sales of the previous fiscal year total.
This is the breakdown of download sales by region through the third quarter of the previous fiscal year and this fiscal year. You can see that the sales figures for each region exceeded those of the previous fiscal year. Especially significant is the growth rate of The Americas ? the yellow part of the graph.
The Americas accounts for around half, followed by Japan and Europe.
This slide shows top selling download titles excluding download versions of packaged software.
In particular, add-on content for Super Smash Bros. and Mario Kart 8 made large contributions.
We will continue to release attractive add-on content maximizing features of each software title since they help maintain software usage rate and keep the title at the center of conversation.
This information comes from Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima…
Next is amiibo. More than a year has passed since we released amiibo in November 2014 as a brand new product category together with Super Smash Bros. for Wii U. Today, more than 80 types of amiibo have been released in Japan with over 25 amiibo-compatible games.
Approximately 31 million units of figure-type amiibo have shipped to date worldwide as of the end of third quarter of this fiscal year.
This information comes from Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima…
This graph shows the comparison between the Wii U software sell-through numbers from 2014 and 2015 in the Japanese market.
Since the two key titles, Splatoon released on May 28 last year and Super Mario Maker released on September 10 last year, had kept up their momentum until the year-end sales season, the total sales figure surpassed that of 2014, when Mario Kart 8 and Super Smash Bros. for Wii U were released.
Splatoon has been showing steady sales for a long time since its release last May. It has shipped 4.06 million units worldwide as of the end of the third quarter of this fiscal year.
It has gradually expanded even among kids and female consumers, and we expect more popularity due to word-of-mouth. We can say a good cycle has been established for this title.
We are also trying various measures from an operational perspective, including holding events in and out of the game, to create opportunities for consumers to continue playing it even long after its release. It has contributed to maintaining high usage rate and public attention.
For your information, the number of participants in Japan taking part in events inside the game called “splatfests” has been consistently increasing since the first one. There were approximately 690 thousand participants in the 10th “splatfest” held on January 23 and January 24 in Japan, which is an all-time high number.
? Approximately 690 thousand of “splatfest” participants are counted based on the number of account used.
This graph compares sell-through transition in Japan from the release week until the new-year holiday sales season for Splatoon to that of a major title released in the same period of the previous year, Mario Kart 8.
Sales of Splatoon have consistently exceeded that of Mario Kart 8 with the exception of the period right after its release. You can also see a substantially bigger sell-through of the title in the year-end sales season.
Splatoon is not losing momentum even after the start of a new year and we anticipate it has the potential to be a long-selling title.
Last September, we globally released a “create and play” type of Mario software, Super Mario Maker , in which you use the Wii U GamePad controller to freely create 2D Mario courses. This title has been showing steady sales worldwide, and has shipped over three million units as of the end of the third quarter of this fiscal year.
A large increase in the number of players for the game following the year-end sales season has led to over 6.2 million different user-created playable courses, which in turn have been played over 400 million times as of January 27.
In order to keep up the high usage rate of the game, we have been periodically updating the software and expanding related services. We have added functions like “parts” with which users can create a greater variety of courses, and also launched a web portal called “Super Mario Maker Bookmark” in which users can more easily search for interesting courses to play.
This graph shows the comparison between the Wii U hardware sell-through numbers from 2014 and 2015 in the Japanese market.
The momentum of the Splatoon and Super Mario Maker games released last year was maintained until the end of the year, which also drove sales of the hardware.
Thanks to the new Wii U hardware bundles with Splatoon or Super Mario Maker preinstalled having launched in the sales season, the total sales of the hardware increased over the previous year.
This graph shows the comparison between the Nintendo-published Wii U software sell-through numbers from 2014 and 2015 in the US and European markets.
Due to the continuous sales of Mario Kart 8 and Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, both released in 2014, and two strong titles Splatoon and Super Mario Maker released almost at the same time as in Japan, the software sales exceeded the previous year as well.
This graph shows the comparison between the Wii U hardware sell-through numbers from 2014 and 2015 in the US and European markets.
For the year-end sales season, we made available Wii U hardware bundles with Splatoon and Super Smash Bros. for Wii U for the US market and with Splatoon and Mario Kart 8 for the European market. Thanks to the new bundles, Wii U hardware sales were comparable to the previous year in both the US and Europe. Going forward, we will work to keep up the console usage rate of the many consumers who have purchased Wii U in the year-end sales season and encourage them to purchase another title.
