Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 10 Comments

For what feels like the umpteenth time, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has commented on why the company doesn’t feel compelled to bring its games to smart devices.

According to Iwata, selling titles for such platforms has the potential to negatively impact other segments of Nintendo’s business. Iwata also believes that revenue from such an effort “cannot be a pillar” for the company. Smartphone development simply isn’t an option unless doing so could be successful.

Iwata told Bloomberg:

“The smartphone market is probably more competitive than the console business. We have had a console business for 30 years, and I don’t think we can just transfer that over onto a smartphone model.”

“Our games such as Mario and Zelda are designed for our game machines so if we transfer them into smartphones as they are, customers won’t be satisfied. If customers aren’t satisfied with the experience, it will decrease the value of our content.”

Iwata added that no games moved onto smartphones from game machines have continuously generated tens or hundreds of billions of yen in the long-term.

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Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, General Nintendo, News, Wii U | 6 Comments

Nintendo has published the full outline from its financial results briefing held earlier today, featuring comments from Satoru Iwata. You can find it here. We’ve already picked out quite a few quotes from the briefing (not to mention the comprehensive summary that went up earlier!), but if you want to read up on more lovely comments from Iwata, now you have the chance to do so.

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Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, News | 31 Comments

While Wii U may be suffering from a dearth of third-party support, outside developers and publishers continue to work on new experiences for 3DS – especially in Japan. Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said during an investor briefing earlier today that we can count on even more third-party games for the platform, “including unannounced ones.”

Iwata said:

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Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii U | 17 Comments

Nintendo has been hard at work on creating certain titles that can only be realized with the Wii U GamePad. We’ll start seeing some of the company’s efforts at this year’s E3, according to president Satoru Iwata.

Iwata told investors the following during a briefing held earlier today:

At the Corporate Management Policy Briefing this January, I explained that the company would prioritize making and proposing Wii U software titles that can only be made possible with the Wii U GamePad. We are planning to disclose our progress on this at E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) in Los Angeles in June.

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Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii U | 2 Comments

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata shared a few words about the planned web app for Mario Kart 8 during the company’s investor briefing earlier today. Read on below for his comments.

To enjoy these features even when you are not playing this game on the console, we are planning to offer a web service called “Mario Kart TV” (temp.), which also enables users to watch videos in a screen layout suitable for systems such as smart devices and computers, around the same time as the release of “Mario Kart 8.”

This is the layout for a smartphone. This web service will enable more people to easily watch Nintendo’s official videos, view rankings, watch videos that their friends have shared and videos of tournaments in which they have participated.

As I mentioned at the Corporate Management Policy Briefing in January, our policy is to establish consumer relationships based on accounts named Nintendo Network IDs, which are abbreviated as NNIDs. This “Mario Kart TV” (temp.) web service is available even for players without NNIDs, but by logging into the service with an NNID, they will be able to easily find their rankings, videos that their friends have shared, videos of tournaments in which they have participated, and it will be convenient to access this service through smart devices even when they are not at home.
We will work on providing this type of service so that players can enjoy video games more and be in contact with them even when they are not in front of a video game system.

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Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, General Nintendo, News, Wii U | 4 Comments

We now have direct quotes from Nintendo president Satoru Iwata regarding the company’s NFP plans. You can find all of his comments below.

To establish new and growing areas through the active utilization of character IP, it is important for Nintendo to take risks ourselves and come up with interesting ways to use our character IP.
In other words, other than using character IP in Nintendo’s video game software, we need to start a new business that will someday become one of our core activities.

As Nintendo’s first step

We have decided to release character figurines with built-in NFC functionality that are compatible with video games starting from this year-end sales season.

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Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, News, Wii U | 8 Comments

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Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, General Nintendo, News, Wii U | 18 Comments

It’s that time again! Nintendo is once again hosting an investor briefing in Japan having reported its latest financial results just a few hours ago.

We’ll be keeping track of any news that comes through below, courtesy of analyst David Gibson. Expect updates in this post for the next hour or so.

Updates below:

– Iwata saying 3DS hit 43 million
– Helping is next Pokemon, Tomodachi Life in June internationally
– 3DS third-party titles to come include Monster Hunter 4G and Youkai Watch 2 in Japan
– Wii U: want to regain momentum with 2 signature titles in Mario Kart 8 and Smash Bros.
– System update in June will speed up start up by 20 seconds
– First smart device app will be available by end of fiscal year
– This is called Mario Kart TV and will enable sharing of game movie and rankings
– In June, Japanese users will be able to use SUICA transport cards for payments on Wii U through NFC
– On IP licensing: nothing to announce today, but Nintendo is looking at a joint agreement
– Limited profit, so Nintendo is looking at non-games usage for licensing
– Will launch figurine business called NFP – NFC featured platform
– Nintendo showed Mario figure across many games being used including saves
– NFP game and figures will be shown at E3
– 3DS will also get IR NFP reader so figures can be used across Wii U and 3DS
– Wii U target of 3.6 million units will need more manufactured than in current inventory
– Nintendo not experiencing a loss from hardware anymore
– More Wii U games at E3
– NFP has been in development since last year
– Nintendo would rather make not just make a figurine, but something that does more
– Nintendo hopes to show related games in development at E3 for the NFC tech
– Iwata saying that for this fiscal year (through 3/15), the goal is to increase profits
– 3/16 fiscal year: not grow dramatically
– 3/17 fiscal year: develop pillar for growth with growth
– Iwata: we are preparing for next generation hardware as always, when will it release? Difficult to declare
– Iwata: not hopeless or at a loss in coming up with something new, but until existing users are satisfied, we cannot release next hardware
– Iwata: for Quality of Life, don’t think too narrowly of Nintendo, we can make fun, healthy services… we know how to get people hooked
– Iwata: developers will move into new building in Kyoto around E3; currently teams are separate so will share more
– Iwata: have established Business Development department with outputs like NFP, entering into new markets, use smart phone platforms etc
– Iwata: for emerging markets, $30-60 game prices are difficult. Need something new, but won’t be this fiscal year, studying China changes
– Iwata: the Wii U forecast of 3.6 million don’t think it is peak, wanted to be more conservative this year

And that’s it!

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Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS eShop, News, Wii U eShop | 1 Comment

CVG is among the outlets to have put up an interview with Curve Studios following the announcement of Stealth Inc 2 for Wii U today. Design director Jonathan Biddle and managing director Jason Perkins shared more about bringing Stealth Inc 2 to the Wii U eShop, past experiences working with Nintendo (including Satoru Iwata’s involvement with Fluidity: Spin Cycle), and more.

You can find Biddle and Perkins’ comments after the break. For CVG’s full article, check out this link.

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Posted on 10 years ago by Jarop(@gamrah) in General Nintendo, News | 30 Comments

It’s no secret that Nintendo’s president and CEO Satoru Iwata has been under the pump in recent months with the company’s current financial standing. In an interview with Japanese news outlet Diamond, Iwata had the following to say about the Nintendo going forward (translated by the folks over at Siliconera):

“Surely, a lot of people around the world must think ‘Nintendo is a company that is just for video games,’ about us, and I believe that there are more and more of our own employees who’ve begun to think like that,” said Iwata. “Some employees that are in charge of making things, are often kept positions where they have to think of how they can make the game in front of them more fun, so I don’t think it can be helped if others outside of our company think like that.”

“So, even if the fact that our focus being video games won’t be changing, I felt the need to take this occasion to say ‘Nintendo is a company that can do whatever they want’.”

“This subject came to light when Yamauchi passed away, but I felt that ‘our surroundings are greatly changing. We need to redefine what Nintendo must do, from this point on’. However, I felt that saying ‘Nintendo will do anything,’ was also the wrong  idea for the company.”

“Yamauchi was one to always say ‘Nintendo is a company for entertainment, and it shouldn’t be for anything else,’ and he didn’t necessarily think that ‘entertainment = video games’. I’ve been wondering how to express Yamauchi’s feelings, and I’ve been thinking about it non-stop, even during the New Year’s holiday break.”

“Lately, the words ‘QOL’ (quality of life) have come up,” says Iwata. “Entertainment is there to improve people’s quality of life. After your basic needs, there’s entertainment. However, when it comes to ‘improving people’s quality of life,’ I didn’t know the difference between us and household appliance makers.”

“At the start of this year, I finally figured that ‘improving people’s quality of life with fun,’ with emphasis to the ‘fun’ would be perfect for Nintendo. And that’s when I decided to use this as a focus during the financial results meeting in January and wrote the manuscript for the presentation.”

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