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Nintendo Investor Q&A now up in English.
- Thread starter axisofweevils
- Start date
Interesting read.
Seems they're aware of how much is riding on the NX launch, and are trying to use mobile to mitigate the damage from missing the holiday season.
Hard to say because I haven't been keeping an eye on the money flow from Miitomo, but couldn't this blow up in their face if the Animal Crossing and Fire Emblem titles aren't a hit? Seems like they're dangerously putting all their eggs in the mobile basket for the holiday season.
With that said, I really hope they know what they're doing with the launch lineup for the NX. The extra time they've given to it has me hopeful that this won't be the usual console launch, but I feel like I say that every time a new console is launched.
EDIT: I want to clarify, since I know a lot of people like to hop on the doom and gloom train, that I don't think Nintendo would be in any real danger if the mobile games failed in the holiday season, just that it wouldn't be good for them.
Seems they're aware of how much is riding on the NX launch, and are trying to use mobile to mitigate the damage from missing the holiday season.
Hard to say because I haven't been keeping an eye on the money flow from Miitomo, but couldn't this blow up in their face if the Animal Crossing and Fire Emblem titles aren't a hit? Seems like they're dangerously putting all their eggs in the mobile basket for the holiday season.
With that said, I really hope they know what they're doing with the launch lineup for the NX. The extra time they've given to it has me hopeful that this won't be the usual console launch, but I feel like I say that every time a new console is launched.
EDIT: I want to clarify, since I know a lot of people like to hop on the doom and gloom train, that I don't think Nintendo would be in any real danger if the mobile games failed in the holiday season, just that it wouldn't be good for them.
Visualante2
Member
Their spin game is strong. Micro transactions is going to be a part of Nintendo's future. Nintendo making business decisions around the Yen being week also seems precarious. Is the Yen looking to remain weak in the medium term? Also think betting everything on Zelda is not good. Launching with a bunch of titles from Holiday 16 ain't going to excite third parties.
Captain Smoker
Member
He's talking about the launch in terms of the Yen.
SolidSnakex
Member
Animal Crossing should be easy money with how mobile structure works. Just sell lots of content like furniture and clothing and it's basically a goldmine.
Linkstrikesback
Member
Well they do have Pokémon. But they are seemingly unprepared for the holiday this year so far, and given the e3 announcement of only zelda, it isn't likely to change.
michaelius
Banned
Looks like they are dodging most of question with non-answers.
Visualante2
Member
Yes but if the Yen recovers through the life of the system then they would be in bad shape. The launch will presumably be supply constrained anyway. Lets not forget that Nintendo had to buy European Wii U units that weren't selling one quarter.
They don't need to excite third parties, they need to excite consumers. Zelda isn't a bad way to start, and they probably have a Mario game being prepared for the NX as well.
Visualante2
Member
I'm saying 3-4 month old third party ports aren't going to excite consumers. So yeah Nintendo software will do great, third parties might get cold feet early on in the system's life.
Miitomo should've been a similar case, but it's also dropping users if I've been hearing correctly. While I certainly agree that Animal Crossing and Fire Emblem SHOULD work as mobile titles, I'll repeat what I said in the original thread, that Nintendo don't seem interested in bringing the full experience to mobile, so I don't expect either of these games to be Nintendo-tier titles, rather, mobile-tier like Pokemon GO.
Unrelated, but I forgot to mention in my original post, I like the investor who basically said Miyamoto should work on mobile titles. As someone who isn't particularly fond of his innovations in consoles, I wouldn't be against putting him on mobile stuff, while leaving console development to someone less enthusiastic about changing up the way we play games.
NeonZ
Member
Their wording makes it sound like they're talking about multiple internally developed or published titles, not just Zelda.
Nintendo heads are the best at not committing to any revenue in details.
Mobile revenues? It's included in the total. It might be 50 millions or 500 millions, but the total doesn't change. Wii U death helps both NX and 3ds. No clear revenue estimates for either, but somehow we will reach the target. And that will, because the target is super low.
At least one clear info without any spin is that NX won't be sold at loss.
Mobile revenues? It's included in the total. It might be 50 millions or 500 millions, but the total doesn't change. Wii U death helps both NX and 3ds. No clear revenue estimates for either, but somehow we will reach the target. And that will, because the target is super low.
At least one clear info without any spin is that NX won't be sold at loss.
Dreamwriter
Member
When that decision is to not sell for a loss, it's a safe decision. Better than betting that the yen will be strong and selling for a loss, and then being wrong.
Third parties are excited by one thing: system sales. Launching with a number of high-profile titles such as Zelda is how you kickstart system sales (Wii U failed at this). Considering the low number of first-party console games that were developed by first-party developers in the last year and a half, and the hints Nintendo gave at this Q&A, Nintendo most likely has a sizeable list of games that will be ready for NX launch and the months after.
wonderful103
Member
We should all just be playing games with a single joystick and 1 or 2 big shiny red buttons
It's a vicious circle. The audience for 1st party software is a poor audience for third parties, as Wii U has shown. The audience for third parties has no incentive to buy the console are launch without the major 3rd parties being on board. The third parties have no incentive to port on the console if the audience is but there even if the console sells decent numbers at launch. I hope Nintendo will step in to motivate the third parties and build their audience in some way.
TriForce Hero
Member
Japanese Third parties and Indies I think will be a lock.
Western aside Activision and Ubisoft... eh I wouldn't expect much.
I'm calling it right now, and it's going to be hated, but I think this is going to be an illusion of time by shrinking the time frame of its' release through the holiday. Essentially, you release the same amount of games in a lesser amount of time to give the perception of more games being released.
Having all of the major Japanese games would already be a performance. We'll see.
That Q8 is probably the best question I've ever seen from a Nintendo investor. It's not a super interesting answer, but bringing out old Yamauchi and Iwata-philosophies around the importance of launching in time for the holidays to question current strategies, that's damn solid.
Bots are better than you
Banned
Japan 3rds support and the annual IPs from EA, Activision and Ubisoft* is what Nintendo should aim for as a first step. If possible, they should approach Rockstar for the next GTA, too. This support alone would make NX look much more viable.
*(As in, not gimped, not missing (dl-)content and/or gameplay and not months late for full price)
Kikorin
Member
Looks like Kimishima answers are a lot more concise than Iwata's ones.
I think Animal Crossing mobile will be a hit, not sure about Fire Emblem, but it has potential.
Kimishima also seems confident about NX and I think take the decision to jump holiday to have a proper line-up has been an hard choice, but if they did this, maybe will be the time they will don't fuck with the launch line-up (for launch, I mean also the first 6 months, not only dayone games).
I think Animal Crossing mobile will be a hit, not sure about Fire Emblem, but it has potential.
Kimishima also seems confident about NX and I think take the decision to jump holiday to have a proper line-up has been an hard choice, but if they did this, maybe will be the time they will don't fuck with the launch line-up (for launch, I mean also the first 6 months, not only dayone games).
They arent fans of people moving around which would happen all the time in a western studio, also Japan wants to control EVERYTHING
Gaiaknight
Member
Nintendo publishes more software per year than any other developer in the business right now people always seem to ask wy too much from Nintendo.
I ask that Nintendo stop making half-baked spin-offs like Amiibo Festival, Triforce Heroes and Federation Farce.
1. Nintendo produces lots of software overall, but since they have to support multiple platforms each one of them are quite prone to droughts. They've said as such, and that's why NX is likely to be a singular platform that supports both the console and the handheld. It would probably not increase the total amount of games, but if you only own one Nintendo console then you'd have access to a lot more than previously.
2. I would love to see them fund more studios, especially Western. It may be a question of it being difficult to manage so many studios at the same time, no idea (I'm just guessing). That's probably why, when they want to fund a new game and needs a studio to work on it, they tend to turn to companies like Platinum, SEGA etc. Those are already established (and Japanese) and have good management in place that they can work with and trust will be able to get things done without having to poke their nose into everything all the time on the lowest level.
wild wild rice
Member
Everyone leave Star Fox Zero on for at least 12 hours a day so we get a sequel.
Gaiaknight
Member
I'm not defending amiibo festival that game was fun for about an hr, I really enjoyed triforce heroes especially playing it with gaf as for federation force I'm going the wait and see approach before I make a judgement. Spin offs and devs getting lazy is usually how it goes when everything has been shifted to a new platform.
I'd expect EA as well. Nintendo would be DOA without FIFA in Europe and Madden in the USA. They need to make sure they are onboard at launch.
Possumowner
Member
Good read,lots of PR speak.Let's see if they really launch with quality/quantity software in March
Visualante2
Member
Iwata claimed they were doing this at the end of the Wii generation. At least they have worked with some third parties on major franchises.
They did fund a bunch of new studios around 15-20 years ago. Retro Studios, NST, Brownie Brown, NdCube, Mobile21, Genius Sonority, Flagship, Monegi and the Marigul group companies. Some of them still exist today.
Will comb through this. I had a thought over the weekend that most of the media ignored when all of this went down. What if NX launches with a handheld component and the fact that it's MIA this E3 is because Nintendo has a lot of 3DSes to push this year with its big line up. With a big Pokemon game launching this fall, I doubt Nintendo would want public knowledge of NX ruining 3DSes last holiday in the market.
Everyone is focusing on the Wii U and it being dead, but maybe the lack of NX is to allow one last good year for 3DS...
Everyone is focusing on the Wii U and it being dead, but maybe the lack of NX is to allow one last good year for 3DS...
Orniletter
Banned
They publish one or two retail 3DS games per month and have published 3 Wii U games this year already (or 4 if you count SF Guard as it's own thing).
They publish significantly more games than Sony and Microsoft.
They don't need more quantity, they need to concentrate their output on one platform.
Exactly, the issue is that Nintendo's focus is currently split between two platforms.
Three now with mobile.
Thanks for posting, reading now.
They gained a lot of shares in DeNA to help with that. It's true some NCL staff are working alongside DeNA on mobile, but DeNA seems to be the one doing most of the heavy lifting. You're not wrong though.
Tri force heroes is fantastic. I'm glad I live in a world where it was released.
And you can also infer that since they plan on making up lost revenue from Wii U on NX that NX (launching in march) is the wii U successor, not 3DS. Or just that 3DS still has games and Wii U doesn't (but why doesn't wii u have games? Because they're being pushed back to NX!) I guess NX could a handheld powerful enough to run wii u ports
They gained a lot of shares in DeNA to help with that. It's true some NCL staff are working alongside DeNA on mobile, but DeNA seems to be the one doing most of the heavy lifting. You're not wrong though.
Tri force heroes is fantastic. I'm glad I live in a world where it was released.
And you can also infer that since they plan on making up lost revenue from Wii U on NX that NX (launching in march) is the wii U successor, not 3DS. Or just that 3DS still has games and Wii U doesn't (but why doesn't wii u have games? Because they're being pushed back to NX!) I guess NX could a handheld powerful enough to run wii u ports
Much better for Kimishima to low-ball Nintendo's revenue targets then to set ones that are too high that they can't meet.
Take Two's a must too for NBA 2K, WWE 2K (which should do well on Nintendo platforms), and GTA.
I'm going to start a thread later in May about NX's likely third party support based on what companies have stated.
At least the one launching in March 2017.
MatrixMan.EXE
Member
Yes, because Mario worked perfectly for Wii U.
I think you'll find that yes, they need to excite third parties. Just throwing more Mario and Zelda at the market isn't going to do shit.
NeonZ
Member
The issue is that Nintendo's main software goes in a very different direction from the rest of the industry, not really setting up an audience for them compared to the other 1st parties. Launching in the middle of the generation, there's also very little reason for established audiences to get the system for that software.
They won't change their overall software focus, or sideline Mario and all their mascots in favor of new mature franchises, so they really should design and plan game development and schedule around the idea of missing a lot of critical third party support, including most annualized IPs. If they can't do that, they shouldn't even bother trying again with console hardware.
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