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In a recent interview with Sankei West, Nintendo President Tatsumi Kimishima discussed what’s in store for the company in the coming months, touching on Splatoon, sales, mobile gaming, My Nintendo, and the mysterious, highly anticipated NX.
The interview opened with Sankei mentioning how well Splatoon has been selling, which Kimishima attributed in part to the fact that the game’s characters and the act of splattering paint onto opponents allow it to be more widely accepted by a family audience. He went on to say that in the future, it’s possible for Splatoon to be extended as widely as Super Mario Bros. has. It’s clear from the amount of Splatoon merchandise available in Japan that Nintendo would like to make good on that possibility, as evidenced by these pretty sweet Splatoon watches that are now available from Takara-Tomy. It also lends to the question of whether or not Nintendo anticipated how popular Splatoon would be, and if the desire to expand the franchise and the plethora of merchandising is a direct response to consumer demand or if Nintendo has always had bigger plans for it.
Kimishima also touched on console sales, mentioning that the challenge for consumers of transitioning from Wii to Wii U was high, due to how successful Wii’s sales were. In order to speed up the process of upgrading to Wii U, he wants consumers to understand that there are new ways to play on Nintendo consoles, citing Splatoon’s controls as an example of that, and that even with the 3DS as successful as it is, and its recent hardware upgrade, there’s still room for growth there, as well.
My Nintendo was briefly discussed in the interview– according to Kimishima, aside from collecting coins by playing Nintendo games, there will also be opportunities to obtain bonuses in movie theaters and theme parks, though he didn’t specify what types of bonuses would be available.
Finally, Sankei West turned the subject to the future of Nintendo gaming on mobile and NX, and Kimishima mentioned that Nintendo wants to make its mobile experience different than its console experience, such as progressing through a game for a short time each day. He also acknowledged that the NX needs to be an attractive system that encourages consumers to jump right into it, perhaps in a way saying without saying that it needs to be a more successful transition than what Nintendo has experienced with consumer reluctance to embrace Wii U, as was mentioned earlier in the interview. He closed by saying that Nintendo’s aim with NX is for it to be a totally new, different experience from Wii U and 3DS, and that progress has been steady in its development.
Source: Nintendo Everything
