Unknown to everyone, Malstrom was in attendance at the investors’ question and answer of Nintendo. Disguised in a Sherlock Holmes hat, Malstrom writes what is going on.
But we are now in a position to, for example, realize various ideas conceived by people in the company who had tried “Wii Street U powered by Google.” This software is currently offered at no charge and those who downloaded it for free will be able to continue to use it for free, but we have already announced that we would make it paid content at some point in the future, and at that point, we will make new offers by combining various features.
No one cares about Wii U Street. In Nintendo’s Alternate Universe (the one where they expected everyone to rush out the doors to buy the 3DS because it is ‘omg 3d’), they probably imagined everyone being in ‘awe’ of Wii U Street and witty tech writers say, “Nintendo is on the cutting edge of technology!” The original plan was to sell the app. It looks like Nintendo is going through with that original plan. I’m sure both Nintendo fans will enjoy paying for it.
I think that those who already own a Wii U system are starting to understand the advantages of having a game console that is connected to a TV as well as the Internet and, together with a device with touchscreen controls that you can hold in your hands, integrate to form one system.
All 3.5 million of the Wii U owners ‘are starting to understand’ the system! So far, more people ‘understood’ the Gamecube.
And if you are like me and do not like the console, then you ‘do not understand it’. You can only ‘understand it’ by liking it. Crazy Nintendo Alternate Universe at work. The pikmin are running around in circles.
I have two scenarios of my own that I feel Nintendo may eventually follow. One is for Nintendo to abandon the strategy of the expansion of the gaming population and instead focus its business efforts on children and families, an audience with whom Nintendo has had consistent success. The other scenario is for Nintendo to acquire a cloud gaming company and become a cloud gaming company itself. I feel that these are both possible scenarios, but could Mr. Iwata please tell us, to the extent possible, what he thinks of these ideas?
I agree with the cloud proposal. But abandon ‘expansion of gaming’? Let’s see how Iwata answers this…
Families and children are indeed very important audiences for Nintendo. This policy will never change.
Stupid investor.
However, at this point in time, I do not think that acquiring a cloud gaming company will in any way improve our performance, so we are not moving in that direction.
Cloud is another way of saying ‘account system not based on hardware’. This Japanese mentality is backwards compared to the rest of the world. Don’t tell Iwata this. He still believes Japan is ‘a couple years ahead’ of the West (*snicker* *snicker*).
As there has been a downturn in the video game industry for the past two years, some, specifically in the U.S., say that video games themselves have entered a difficult phase. This is probably due to two elements.
Oh, this should be good.
One is that consumers have a higher psychological hurdle to paying a certain sum of money for software. Many people attribute this to smart devices, but I don’t think it is the only reason. We try to offer various kinds of software for a video game platform, and the games are improving steadily each year, but these improvements are becoming less noticeable. In short, what one platform can offer will eventually become saturated. Every consumer will inevitably become tired of and get less excitement from the same type of entertainment. It has become more difficult for a game which developers in this industry, including us, created with the same or greater amount of energy, to move or amaze consumers. Lowering software prices and a rise in the number of devices you can play games on without a dedicated gaming machine are gradually setting the bar higher for us to encourage our consumers to pay a certain sum of money for software.
It is because your games suck, Iwata. Who is excited for Aonuma to shit on Zelda some more? Who is excited for more Yet-Even-More-3d-Mario? Who is excited for Pikmin 3?
The games are NOT getting better. They are getting WORSE.
The other element is the lowered sales level of the entire video game market as the current non-Nintendo home consoles are nearing the end of their product cycles. These factors combined have caused the current situation. I believe the future of the video game industry depends on the number of games developers release that consumers consider to be fresh and worth paying for.
So it is the Xbox 360 and PS3 coming to the end of their lifecycle that is hurting sales of Nintendo games? Keep living in that Alternate Universe, Iwata.
We originally planned to release a few first-party titles for Wii U during the first half of this year, but no big titles are scheduled for release before “Pikmin 3” in July because we decided to take time to add the final touches to ensure that consumers fully feel that they are valuable titles. The brand of a franchise would be completely degraded without customer satisfaction.
Tell that to Metroid: Other M, to every Zelda made after Ocarina of Time, and to every Mario game after Super Mario World. How can Pikmin 3 satisfy customers when there are no customers of Pikmin 3 to satisfy?
The reason why “Fire Emblem Awakening” and “Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon” have been well received by consumers in the U.S. and European markets is that they still respect the value of games that have been carefully developed to take advantage of dedicated gaming machines.
Or it is because there is no third party alternative for those type of games. This reminds me of the N64 when Nintendo’s first party games got a sales boost because of little to no third party games. What other RPG type game could you buy for the N64 aside from Zelda?
I appreciate your opinion that I should concentrate on supervising software development in Japan, but we would like to achieve good results so that later you will understand that the change in management was indeed a good decision.
Iwata just told the investor to go pound sand. The investor suggested that Iwata focus overseeing video game development in Japan instead of overseeing the overseas branches. What we saw is a saucy Iwata.
The reason for the delayed release of our first-party titles was the fact that completing the games released at the same time as the launch of Wii U required more development resources than expected, so some staff members from development teams working on other titles had to help complete them.
The lame NSMB U and ridiculous Nintendo Land ‘needed’ to poach other developers to finish. Good lord. This is the worst answer he could have made. If this was true, why do those titles look so unbaked?
On the contrary, some developers say in interviews that Wii U has a different architecture from other consoles and that, when utilized in the right way, it can perform well.
Why doesn’t Nintendo make their architecture to what the West is familiar with as Sony is doing this generation? Why does Nintendo insist on ‘Japanese architecture’?
And here we conclude this financial conference. I don’t see much changing for Wii U. Let’s see what E3 presents.