According to Japanese publication The Nikkei the Nintendo 3DS is on track to cross the four million mark in Japanese sales by the end of the year. In an earlier interview Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said that he expected the system to reach the four million mark within a year of its launch, or by the end of February 2012. Looks as though Nintendo is set to beat that by two whole months.
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has confessed to investors that the company deliberately decided to hold back some Nintendo 3DS titles so they didn’t swamp the Christmas release schedule.
“Video games need to stay fresh, so it is not practical for us to put them on hold for too long, but we think that some of them may be held for a certain amount of time so that there will be a short interval between when they are completed and when they are launched.
“We are taking on this sort of challenge for the Nintendo 3DS. For example, when we look at the software lineup for the year-end sales season, it is so dense that, if we added any more software, the total sales would not increase.
“Accordingly, we have intentionally delayed the launch of some software titles to early next year.”
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has told investors that the company is hard at work creating titles for the Nintendo 3DS that should attract people who are not particularly interested in video games. Apparently several of these titles are already in development and should be coming out next year.
“Aiming for the next fiscal year, we are also working on new genres of software that may attract people who are not particularly interested in video games.”
- Satoru Iwata
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has confirmed that the final version of the Wii U will be shown at next years E3 event in June. During Nintendo’s semi-annual financial results briefing Iwata confessed that Nintendo had learned a “bitter lesson” with the launch of the Nintendo 3DS, and that they will take “every possible measure” to ensure that the Wii U launch is an overwhelming success.
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has stated categorically to Japanese paper the Nikkei that there’s absolutely no chance that Nintendo will develop games for smartphones despite increasing pressure from investors.
“Absolutely not”
This is absolutely not under consideration,” replied Iwata. “If we did this, Nintendo would cease to be Nintendo. Having a hardware development team in-house is a major strength. It’s the duty of management to make use of those strengths. It’s probably the correct decision in the sense that the moment we started to release games on smartphones we’d make profits. However, I believe my responsibility is not to short term profits, but to Nintendo’s mid and long term competitive strength.”
01Net, the publication which previously leaked key Wii U and PlayStation Vita information is now reporting that Nintendo president Satoru Iwata “is now in very delicate position, if not on an ejection seat.”
If we are to believe our source, the chairman of the board, Satoru Iwata, is now in very delicate position, if not on an ejection seat. Iwata is generally appreciated by the staff of the company, many employees worried about his fate. Also according to our source, the fact that he publicly assumed responsibility for a difficult start to the 3DS and voluntarily cut his salary in half may not be enough to save his place in the medium term.
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has written a letter to all Nintendo 3DS owners apologizing for the recently announced price cut. The letter was originally in Japanese but the guys over at Giant Bomb have managed to translate the original letter into English. I highly suggest taking the time out to read it.
To Those Customers Who Bought A Nintendo 3DS Before The Price Change
Greetings, everyone. This is Satoru Iwata from Nintendo.
Thank you very much for purchasing a Nintendo 3DS.
We have just announced a price drop for the Nintendo 3DS system effective on August 11 [August 12 in North America].
In the past, there have been price drops for video game systems some time after their release in order to broaden the user base further. However, never before has Nintendo chosen to issue such a dramatic price drop less than 6 months after a system release.
We are all too keenly aware that those of you who supported us by purchasing the 3DS in the beginning may feel betrayed and criticize this decision.
This unprecedented timing for a price cut is because the situation has changed greatly since we originally launched the 3DS. We decided it was necessary to take this drastic step in order to ensure that large numbers of users will continue to enjoy the 3DS in the future.
If the software creators and those on the retail side are not confident that the Nintendo 3DS is a worthy successor to the DS and will achieve a similarly broad (user) base, it will be impossible for the 3DS to gain popularity, acquire a wide range of software, and eventually create the product cycle necessary for everyone to be satisfied with the system.
Those customers who purchased the 3DS at the very beginning are extremely important to us. We know that there is nothing we can do to completely make up for the feeling that you are being punished for buying the system early. Still, we would like to offer the following as a sign of our appreciation to you.
[3DS Ambassador program details]
We feel a strong responsibility to develop the 3DS as a platform — to ensure that, in the end, everyone is satisfied; we will make every effort to do so.
Additionally, we know everyone is waiting for Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7. They are scheduled for release in November and December, respectively, so we ask for your patience until then.
Thank you again, and we look forward to your continued support.
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has explained to shareholders that Nintendo needed to take drastic measures with the Nintendo 3DS as sales of the console were falling far below their initial expectations. Iwata pointed out that Nintendo will reassess the situation four months after the price cut to work out what needs doing next.
As we announced at the E3 show, which was held in Los Angeles this past June, we have a strong software lineup for Nintendo 3DS toward the end of this calendar year, with which we were thinking that we would be able to boost the hardware sales, but in terms of the current situation, for us to be able to help Nintendo 3DS to become a sound successor to Nintendo DS, and to get it back on track to its originally-anticipated sales pace for its wide expansion, we concluded that we needed to take drastic measures, and we decided to make the markdown.
First, since the launch of Nintendo 3DS, one of the things we have learned is that it has taken longer than we had originally expected in order for the appeal of this product to widely spread.
Another reason is, we thought that eliminating the concerns of future hardware expansion early on would make a great difference to how retailers and software publishers will allocate their energies.
In short, we have concluded that, for Nintendo 3DS to expand enough to become the successor of Nintendo DS, we have to take a drastic approach.
More specifically, I hope you will at least try to see how it will play out over the next four months, until the end of the year-end sales season, before making any judgments.
On the other hand, a drastic markdown like this, before the mass-production effect can take place for the hardware, will naturally generate red ink on the hardware sales. As a result, a significant minus effect is expected on the profitability of the current fiscal year. Even though we understand this, for us to elevate Nintendo 3DS to be the platform that can sustain our business, we have concluded that we need to take the best possible measure we can take now, even at the cost of short-term profitability.
It is quite unusual for us to change the price in less than half a year from a products launch. I am aware that realizing both the short-term and the mid-to-long term profits is one of my responsibilities as part of the management. I feel greatly accountable for having to make the markdown shortly after the launch, for having damaged our consumers’ trust, for having made a significant impact upon the financial forecasts, for the annual dividend now being expected to be significantly less than originally expected and for now forecasting that there will be no interim dividend.
However, for the management to show its accountability for the level of the operating loss of this time and the prospect of no interim dividend, we decided at the directors’ meeting yesterday that we would reduce the compensation we will receive as the directors of the company.
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has told shareholders that he is taking a 50% pay cut due to lackluster sales of the Nintendo 3DS. It’s not just Iwata who is taking a pay cut as some representative directors are taking a 30 percent cut, and other executives are taking a 20 percent cut. Just to give some perspective Satoru Iwata currently makes the equivalent of around US $2 million. Shigeru Miyamoto earns around $1.2 million.
“For cuts in fixed salaries, I’m taking a fifty percent cut, other representative directors are taking a 30 percent cut, and other execs are taking a 20 percent cut.”
Ian Baverstock from Tenshi Ventures recently took the stage at the Develop Conference in Brighton, England, and claimed that Nintendo president Satoru Iwata is out of touch with consumers and has a rather draconian view of the video games industry.
“I just don’t agree. This lack of craftsmanship is really a reflection of Nintendo’s point of view – they are completely obsessed with retail, and have been very successful in that.”
“Ultimately for Mr Iwata to be able to sit there and say that we’re losing craftsmanship, we’re losing skills… at the same time that Minecraft comes out, sells millions and makes one man lots of money and creates a huge public buzz, is a shocking indictment of his view of the world that we all see.”
Baverstock went on to prophesy a “second great age of development” – the first being in the late ‘80s.
“We’re not very far away now from the beginnings of next generation [of technology] from Sony and Microsoft. I don’t know when that will come, but at that point… the idea that there are going to be many independent developers with either their own money, or even publishers money, making games on those platforms – there are going to be very, very few.”
“In the end, once you get past that preachy title of why developers need to change, the reason why I’m so riled by Mr. Iwata’s point of view is that fundamentally it’s smack talk: ‘You, Mr. Developer, stay in your box, you stay down there, we’ll do with this other stuff, you just carry on making games.’”
