Scott Moffitt says eSports helped reignite interest in Smash Bros., talks Nintendo audience
alistdaily has a new interview up with Scott Moffitt, executive vice president of sales and marketing at Nintendo of America. You can find the full discussion here, though there are a couple of noteworthy excerpts that we’ve highlighted below.
On the topic of how eSports has played in the success of Super Smash Bros., Moffitt said:
There does seem to be a ton of pent-up demand for this franchise. ESports has helped to rekindle gamers’ love for this franchise and really prepare the environment for a fantastic launch. I do believe that the record sales are due to a lot of the pre-awareness activity that has gone on, including eSports. The 3DS game also helped satisfy gamers’ demand temporarily before the Wii U game. ESports is one of the things that has helped drive the pre-launch excitement for this game to a fever pitch.
Moffitt also said the following on how the Nintendo gaming audience differs from that of Sony and Microsoft:
There are some similarities and some differences. For certain our fans appreciate the fact that we release quality titles and showcase innovation in everything that we do. We try to be different. Our owners are often times families with kids, but it’s much broader than that. Our core, most passionate Nintendo fans certainly are much older than that and are in their 20’s and 30’s and they grew up with our games. Our appeal is broad and quality is a big reason why. If you look across all titles launched on the new generation platforms, including Sony and Microsoft, as well as portable, there are 19 games that have at least an 85 Metacritic Score and a User Score of 8.5 or better. Nintendo made 17 of those games.
