Nintendo's president answers questions about the the American market, FPS Wii controls, the purchase of Monolith and more.
As part of Nintendo's financial report festivities, Satoru Iwata sat down with investors and engaged in a question and answer session. The investors did the asking, and Mr. Iwata did the answering. The topics covered a broad spectrum, and Iwata's answers were long-winded. To save you the trouble of reading through the entire thing, we've highlighted some of the best parts. If this doesn't satisfy you, you can read the entire Q&A here.
Iwata on the purchase of Monolith from Namco:
"In the case of Monolith Software, Mr. Sugiura, the president, and Nintendo have a long-term relationship. How Mr. Sugiura thinks is close to how Nintendo thinks. The software Mr. Sugiura would like to create is in line with what Nintendo would like to have for its platform. So, we thought that Nintendo should support this idea, and we decided to take action.
If certain conditions are met, we may do the same thing in the future (the merger and acquisition of another company). However, we will be very careful and selective, so that we will only partner with people with whom Nintendo can create a long-term working relationship."
On expanding the market for DS in America:
"We will be glad as more Pokémon are sold, but it is not enough when we want to expand the gaming population. When I received a report from the U.S. that they sold 1 million Pokémon Diamond & Pearl already, I asked them, "why did you sell only 10,000 Brain Age last week, when Europe sold through 30,000?" This is a typical example of how I communicate with our people in the U.S."
On Metroid Prime 3 and Wii first-person shooter controls:
"Those who recognize that mouse and keyboard combination is the best for FPS are now sharing with us their impression that Wii Remote and Nunchuk of Wii give them quite similar play feel and that they find some more potential with this new combination than with the existing controlling mechanism of other home console video game machines.
Of course, no actual consumers have ever tested it yet, but I think it important for us to create the market where the developers will say, 'Wii's controllers are perfectly suited for this genre of games.' I think it is one of the important elements for us in order to expand the gaming population."
On why Nintendo forecast lower DS sales this year (22 million) compared to last year (23.6 million):
"Just looking at the Japanese domestic market in the fiscal year ended March 2007, we sold more than 9 million DS hardware, and we have to say it was an extraordinary case. Nothing can sell this much unless some social phenomena factor is there. In fact, as I see it, no other video game hardware was able to sell 6 million [in Japan] in one year in the past. But DS has sold far beyond this number. If we should try to base our forecasts upon such an extraordinary year, we would end up making too aggressive a target. We had to rather think, now that we sold this many in Japan last year, hitting the ceiling must not be incredibly far ahead. Including this kind of thinking, we had come up to the estimate that others might find a bit conservative, and we think it was appropriate."
On pursuing the recently retired Ken Kutaragi of Sony to join the ranks of Nintendo:
"I don't think we will do that."
On the current condition of the DS in the United States:
"We are also noticing what the U.S. people often call 'early signs.' In many different places, something unprecedented is actually taking place in the U.S. People who would never talk about video games are actually discussing DS and Wii or actually touching them. These are the early symptoms for the market to change. So, we have the early signs. But the real market change has not taken place yet. When the change has occurred, the Japanese market doubled its size. I think that same thing can happen in the U.S. We have not gone that far yet but we are listening to the earth rumbling. We have come to that stage."
And finally, Iwata on trying to make the Wii the number one console in America:
"All I can say is, we would like to make efforts to make that happen. It is the analysts' job to predict whether or not we can make it, isn't it? (Laughs) We want as many people around the world as possible to accept our commodities, and we would like to put smiles on as many people as possible."
