Early today, Nintendo released the English translation of their yearly shareholder meeting, an event which offers shareholders the chance to bring up concerns about the company and seek clarification on company policy and action. The whole thing is fascinating: Some of the shareholder questions show canny insight into the industry (and feature a sort of directness that we rarely see in press interviews). Others are... well, a little less informed. The results are incredibly interesting, either way.
Early into the proceedings, one shareholder mentioned that compared to other virtual storefronts where retailers often give big discounts to consumers for digital copies of games, Nintendo seems to keep digital and physical game prices largely in line with each other. Nintendo president Satoru Iwata first re-iterated the company's policy, stating that "Nintendo would like to offer these products to our consumers at the same prices given that their software value is the same,” before then offering potential hope for both fans of sale prices and of the (now gone) Club Nintendo:
We understand that consumers who buy many download versions may not be fully convinced if all of these products cost more than the packaged versions. In the new membership service that we are now developing to replace “Club Nintendo,” we are thinking about providing a system where Nintendo can give (individual) offers to each consumer. I would like to explain the details when we have everything in place for the new membership service, which is targeted to launch this autumn.
I'd love to see this new service actually integrated into Nintendo's storefronts instead of just living out on a website somewhere.
The most interesting thing about these sorts of meetings is that shareholders don’t pull any punches. One investor began a question by stating that they “have the impression that the launches of the two systems, Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, were consecutive failures," before going on to ask how Nintendo would prevent the launch of the forthcoming NX from suffering a similar fate, and whether the company had better developed third party relationships to prevent that from happening.
While Iwata emphasized the 3DS' "recovery" from a weak launch, he did concede the lackluster reception of the Wii U. Nintendo's president then tried to contextualize why the previous, super successful generation of consoles was so anomalous. Describing the process of selling game platforms as a "momentum business," Iwata explained the importance of titles like Brain Age and nintendogs, which helped the Nintendo DS reach demographics who had never played games before. You could make a similar case for the Wii's huge numbers, which had a handful of accessible and intuitive games that really sold the console's potential to a massive group of people. And once you get consoles into hands and homes, it's a lot easier to sell games. The 3DS, and especially the Wii U, have simply lacked that momentum.
With regards to the NX, Iwata first explained that he decided to mention the console's existence earlier this year as a way to address rumors that Nintendo was planning to "give up on the dedicated game system business and concentrate on smart device application development." In effect, Iwata was re-stating Nintendo's general commitment to the game console business even though it was too early to share specific details about the NX project.
Iwata then addressed the shareholder's concern about NX's forthcoming launch with a statement that, frankly, I'm not sure I fully understand:
I will not share details on NX today but with regard to the launch of Nintendo 3DS and Wii U not necessarily having progressed well and not acquiring sufficient support from software publishers, we intend to offer NX through a Nintendo-like solution. Thank you for understanding that we are making various considerations and preparations in order to avoid what happened with the previous generations.
I'm not sure what a "Nintendo-like solution" is. Does that mean the plan is to have weak third party support and then a really dope Zelda game? Or is Iwata referring to "NX" as a software platform and the "Nintendo-like solution" is the console itself? Maybe something was just lost in translation here.
Elsewhere in the Q&A, Iwata confirms that the NX is "a new platform," and states that the company is working internally and with partners to decide "how to continue creating software for Wii U and Nintendo 3DS." I'm pretty sure this just means that there will be the usual transitional period between two console generations, with games releasing are released across multiple platforms, but who knows. Nintendo once called the DS their "Third Pillar" (with the GBA and the GameCube as the other two), so I guess it's possible to imagine a future where the company tries to support three platforms at once, but I have my doubts--both that they'd attempt this strategy, and that it would work if they did try it.
Another shareholder echoed the recent complaints of many Nintendo fans, asking the company to explain the thought process behind their E3 showing. Iwata deferred to Shigeru Miyamoto, since the Mario creator had actually attended the show personally. Miyamoto re-emphasized that the company's goal was to show off games that would release in the near future instead of titles still early in development. The two Nintendo executives did address the fan criticism directly, but even this came with a reassertion of Nintendo’s E3 strategy (and, as a bonus, a bit of a shot at Sony and Microsoft):
Miyamoto: As for future titles, since we only introduced the software to be sold early next year, we acknowledge the criticism from our fans that we failed to excite them with new proposals. On the other hand, when we looked at our booth at E3 this year, I had a solid feeling that our trade customers appreciated the very fact that they were able to play the software which soon would be released into the market and that many of them were Nintendo-like software titles. Other than Nintendo, the major hardware manufacturers, Sony and Microsoft, also had booths, and I got the general impression that they were showcasing not only the products for this year but also many products for next year or the year after and, because of that, introductions for many of their software titles were done visually, not with playable demos.
…
Iwata: One thing I should say about Nintendo’s E3 booth is that, unlike the other booths in general, most of the visitors to our booth were smiling and actually picking up the controllers and playing with our games. So, this was one big difference because a number of the visitors to other booths appeared to have spent a lot of time just watching game videos.
I get what they’re saying here: The most exciting, new games at Sony's and Microsoft’s press conferences weren’t playable on the show floor. But both of those companies did offer a huge collection of playable games from third party developers. For what it’s worth, Iwata does close this question off by stating that he is "listening to people’s opinions" and insists that Nintendo "will try to improve next year and beyond.”
There's much more in the full Q&A. Iwata touches on everything from Nintendo’s “free-to-start” mobile game strategy, the possibility of Nintendo-branded sneakers (and other licensed merch), the nitty gritty on stock information, the sales figures for Nintendo Virtual Console games, and even the likelihood that legendary Seattle Mariner Randy Johnson will retire his jersey number… Listen, stock holders have a wide variety of interests. One strange absence, though: Not a single question about Amiibo. Huh.
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