French publication Lefigaro caught up with Philippe Lavoué, who is the General Manager of Nintendo France, to talk about how Nintendo is performing in the country and also whether they have more to show. Mr. Lavoué said that they have plenty of opportunities to show more this year with three big events coming up.
- Switch is still doing big numbers, they now have high goal for most of their game releases
- Goal is to reach 2 millions sales by the end of this calendar year. It did one million in less than a year.
- Selling 20% more games than last year, software dynamic up YoY
- Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze almost above 100k unit sold
- Zelda BoTW & MK8DX are still charting every week
- They only expected 20% of LABO stock to be sold until September, and the remaining part should be sold in the Christmas period. Says that “market curves are different for a toys-like product compared to a standard video game”.
- About E3 : they preferred to keep it close, to only talk about games releasing in the coming months. Says that they’ve got plenty of opportunities to show more, during Japan Expo (July), Gamescom (August) or Tokyo Game Show (September).
- Three big games this holiday : Super Mario Party, Pokémon Let’s Go & Super Smash Bros Ultimate. First two are family-oriented games and should bring casual audience to the Switch.
- Pretty ambitious goals for Pokémon & Smash, says that so far public response has been above their expectations.
Interesting
Nintendo has their work cut out for them, but like (almost) always, I have faith that they can meet (most people’s actually realistic) expectations with big, surprise titles that are fun and amazing.
Iunderstand not wanting to spill out everything they have up their sleeves at once like a bad magician’s playing cards, but they could’ve shown a little more at E3, when the world was watching. However, Nintendo as a company doesn’t need a big thing like E3 to get the world to watch. They know what they’re doing, and I hope they do it right.
They should have at least 2-3 directs before this year is out… Ninty need to realise Metroid has millions of people wanting it show us something this year please!… I’m still hoping for Star Fox, F-ZERO, Mario Kart 9 and a new IP that is away from the norm
We got our Star Fox game, it’s called Starlink Battle for Atlas. Metroid is not a huge selling game. I do agree about F-Zero though, really hoping for that.
Thing is, Metroid is already confirmed. Believe me, I love F-Zero, I really want a new one, but Metroid sells a lot better than F-Zero does.
It’s not Star fox though lol METROID is big, how come at E3 last year’s millions went nuts over the title lol… And F-ZERO needs to be broutbr back it’s been 15 years!!!
It pretty much is Star Fox considering you can play as the Star Fox crew the entire game. And given how Star Fox has suffered lately as a franchise I would gladly accept Starlink as a Star Fox title. Looks much better than Zero.
Metroid is a game that gets a lot of hype but not many people end up buying. We’ll see how it sells when it is released.
Yes, F-Zero needs to come back! And needs a new soundtrack that evolves from F-Zero X.
Why Mario Kart 9 already? Personally I’m hoping for an expansion to MK8D.
Coz MK8 was like 4 years ago and deluxe ain’t really a new game… Needs better characters, new karts, more options, more like DD :)
DLC could accomplish all of that. I don’t think I’m ready to drop $60 on a totally new game, but I am willing to drop $20-$30 on a crap ton of extras that’ll make the existing, very similar game feel new, while keeping all the old content I love.
Not more dlc god! Rather spend that lil bit more and have a brand new game
But if there’s enough DLC to where it feels like a new game, you’re paying more for less.