A: First of all, please understand that I am not in a position to comment on third parties software, especially when the lineup has not been announced by them.
The reason why I said today that April, May and June sales of Wii will not reach last year's results but that the situation will change from summer this year was because the company has been preparing for several titles to be launched toward the end of this year that can drive the market.
Since the software publishers, especially Western ones, are telling us that they will focus on developing for Wii, we are of course hopeful that they will launch additional titles of which I am not aware today. On the other hand, we must disclose our financial forecast by publicly confirming the company's plans with people in the market. We cannot unreasonably increase the expected shipment numbers by relying on software which may or may not be a great hit in the end, so these unknown software have not been taken into my consideration. However, there are possibilities that such titles can emerge, so we are hopeful.
As for Nintendo DS, software in general had experienced an over-exuberant period when any software could sell well as long as they launched. Such an overheated period, of course, cannot last forever. As time goes by, the difference between software which sells and those that cannot becomes obvious. The software that could not sell can become redundant inventory at distributors and retailers.
While there may be a different scenario if a brand new proposal that I am unaware of now would be made by software publishers and become hits, we have prepared our financial forecast based upon figures we were more certain of today. Accordingly, as the market is always changing, the opinion that calls our forecast rather conservative may be right.
We still need some time before we can determine the sales ratio between Nintendo DSi and Nintendo DS Lite. In the U.S. and Europe, portable game machines can sell relatively well in June and first half of July. Sales last year during this period were high, and we expect the same level of sales this year.
Nintendo is of course planning on launching software, and we expect the software publishers to make a variety of proposals, some of which will be appealing enough to attract new customers.
