IGN: For the past year, we've heard some rough news about Nintendo. The financial reports. That major loss you guys took. I was wondering if you could put that loss into context, with the North American performance specifically. How is Nintendo doing with regards to North America? And going forward, reflecting back on this past year, what are you guys looking to do differently?
Reggie Fils-Aime: Well, Nintendo of America's performance really mirrors the total company performance, because we're such a large chunk of the overall company's financial results. Fundamentally, if you look at our last fiscal year, it was driven by two things. First, obviously, the yen to dollar... And also the yen to euro currency conversion, it's really tough right now. Because everything gets reported back into yen.
But then the other issue, as Mr. Iwata touched on in his financial briefing, was that with the price decline on 3DS, we were selling hardware at a loss. Which is something that we don't do. We never plan on doing it. So those two in combination really drove the negative financial performance. The reduction on 3DS was a lesson for us, right? It reinforced that we have to have great first-party titles at launch. It reinforced for us that we have to have a strong digital offering at launch. And it reinforced for us the importance of making sure that the other entertainment offerings for a device are there at launch.
So if you see how we've applied those learnings to Wii U... Great first-party titles that are going to be within the launch window. A robust online experience, highlighted by Miiverse. And then all of the great entertainment partners with, candidly, a lot more to share at a futture date, as to what we're doing there. So, tough results, certainly, our performance mirrored that. But a lot of key learning that we're approaching and applying to Wii U.
Fils-Aime: The 3DS is rapidly approaching, in the US, five million units sold. Which is a great number. Faster sales pace than DS at the same point in time. We've got a number of strongly-selling titles. 3D Land, Kart 7, Ocarina of Time are all doing exceptionally well. But then the next tranche, with Kid Icarus and now Mario Tennis Open, also doing quite well. So our 3DS business is good. We're aggressive, we want it to be better.
So later on, while we're here at E3, we'll be talking in more depth about some of the key games, first- and third-party, coming for 3DS. But we've got a great lineup that's going to propel us through the holidays. So business is good, we want it to be better, our pace is above DS, which is not something that we would have expected given how strong DS sold. But we've got a lot more work to do.
Fils-Aime: First, it's a great question to ask any of the western publishers in terms of how they think about their support. My perspective is this: Certainly, western developers, historically, have been wanting to see that larger installed base before they jump in behind a platform. That's one general statement I would make.
The second general statement I would make is that for the most part, western third-party developers focus on home console. Versus in Japan, the lead SKU tends to be handheld. So that's another different dynamic that's going on. But candidly, I think with the progress we've made on 3DS, and certainly with the lineup that we have coming for this holiday, my expectation is that we'll certainly see a lot stronger western publisher support. They're going to see the size of that installed base to sell into.
Turn the page as we talk to Reggie about Wii U...
Source : ign[dot]com
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