Going with Nintendo’s financial report today, NCL President Satoru Iwata addressed Nintendo’s shareholders in their Semi-Annual Financial Results Briefing. He noted early on in the presentation that this was meant to be a presentation for the investors, but historically Internet Nintendo fans had often looked through the briefing transcripts and taken somewhat distorted information from them, spreading them around. This is the reason why Nintendo had their Nintendo Direct conference recently, in order to convey interesting information that would be of most relevant to Nintendo fans.
After this disclaimer, during the presentation proper, Iwata showed a large amount of financial data about the state of the video game market in all regions. His most interesting point here was in pointing out that the 3DS is actually experiencing a greater sales growth than the DS had in its infancy, despite slow sales and reports of doom and gloom for the handheld. More interesting, however, is when he brought up a number of plans that Nintendo has for the future of their systems and intellectual properties.
-Nintendo is aiming to develop more titles in the vein of Wii Fit and Brain Age, which a wide variety of consumers will be attracted to.
-Nintendo has plans to greatly expand the functionality of the eShop. Developers will soon be able to offer limited-time demos of their games, as well as additional downloadable content for existing titles. On top of that, the eShop will soon be accessible through PCs and smartphones; players can look at new games, reviews, and even purchase titles through their other devices and then have them downloaded to the 3DS. In the next software update, though, this functionality will be incomplete; 3DS owners will need to take a picture of a QR code on their PC with their 3DS camera, which will bring them to the appropriate purchase page in the eShop.
-Both the Wii and the 3DS will have access to Hulu Plus in the near future.
-The final form of the Wii U will be shown at E3 2012, and the system will launch between April 2012 and March 2013 sometime. Nintendo admits it “learned a bitter lesson with the launch of the Nintendo 3DS” and is working hard to ensure the Wii U launch goes more smoothly.
The full transcript can be found here. Additionally, Twitter user David Gibson was tweeting live from the briefing, and noted that Nintendo planned to launch Kid Icarus: Uprising in Japan in the first quarter of 2012, and also has a new Pokémon title planned for the Spring; neither of these things were mentioned in the transcript.
The added eShop features sound really cool, though that’s something I can already do for my Xbox 360. Every once in a while it feels like Nintendo is trying to play catch-up to the other systems in terms of features, and I hope they do it soon.
