Nintendo Secrets Revealed By Financial Q&A

May. 7 8:47 PM by Lynxara

Nintendo is an infamously tight-lipped company, developing and sometimes even launching products in total secrecy. When Nintendo reveals any of their secrets, it's often part of financial necessity, and this is especially true with the English translation of the Financial Q&A session that recently went up on the Investor Relations section of Nintendo.co.jp.

The questions are pretty far-ranging and hint at a lot of things, so I'll just start a rundown of the major points that seem reasonable to take from a close reading of the Report. Just click behind the cut to see the breakdown.

  • Price cuts are unlikely. I covered this story earlier here, but to quote Iwata from A1: "We have not made our financial forecast with the premise of a hardware price cut. Also, we are not foreseeing the necessity for us to do a price cut in this fiscal year."
  • WiiWare sales in Japan are strong, and expected to be much stronger in other territories. It seems WiiWare is likely to be a success, although Iwata cautions readers not to jump to conclusions in A3: "Will it go pass the tipping point just in one year, or will it take 3 or 5 years? The future of the electronic software distribution business is not very clear today, but it is something that we need to prepare for."
  • Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games sold over 5 million copies in Europe & North America on Wii and DS. Iwata refers to this in A5 as something unprecedented, so expect more games like this.
  • Nintendo is looking into storage solutions for the Wii. This doesn't mean that we'll necessarily see any such solution materialize even in the next few years, but Iwata has stated that Nintendo now officially cares about hardcore complaints regarding memory size in A6. Here's hoping.
  • The arcade decline in Japan isn't Nintendo's problem. This is Iwata's stance, anyway, in A10: "In the entertainment business, however, it is my fundamental belief that we cannot think that a form of entertainment cannibalizes another. People are attracted to a form of entertainment because it offers something that no other form of entertainment can offer."
  • More Wiis connect to the internet in the U.S. than in Japan. Granted, there are more Wiis in the U.S. than in Japan, but the exploration of how many Wiis actually go online in A23 is worth reading. Especially this bit: "The types of Wii user might be a small factor for this. In other words, the ratio of avid gamers is high among the total Wii purchasers in the U.S. and the types of software which are selling in the U.S. are also different."
  • Licensing the Mii is, to Nintendo, like licensing Mario. So don't expect to see tons of Miis in third-party titles or any games that allow for Mii customization anytime soon... at least, no sooner than Suda51's "Mario with a machinegun" game. Check out question A25 for more details.

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