Nintendo president says closer game launches are now a “necessity”
The questions and answers section of Nintendo’s financial briefing has now been uploaded, in English and is providing a wealth of information about the Switch and Nintendo’s plans for it.
Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima was asked about Nintendo’s paid online plans and whether or not that would bring about stable income for Nintendo, but also what were the companies’ plans for competitive online play. His response to the latter was the most interesting;
The profitability of our business ventures depends on how our products are received by our consumers. Therefore, in order to raise revenue in a stable manner, we have to release new products continuously. However, the entertainment business is subject to consumersʼ ever-changing tastes. We believe that the only way to meet this challenge is to fully employ our creativity to satisfy our consumers. Furthermore, in the past it was common for the launch dates of our products to vary between Japan, the U.S. and Europe, but with the instant spread of information in the world today, launches are by necessity much closer to one another. This means that, in some cases, peak sales are concentrated in a certain period of the product lifecycle. In this situation, we have been working to establish more balanced revenue and expense structures to the extent possible by continuously seeking out opportunities to expand our business in multiple directions through the use of our IP.
We’ve often chided Nintendo for their far spread around release dates for games. We could wait months for games for no reason and miss out on the hype, Europe has been getting some games 2-3 months later.
Nintendo now knows this is a buzzkill and says they’re working to making it better. They’re even balancing the books better to make sure releasing all the games at once doesn’t impact their bottom line.
Looks like one of my Switchmas wishes came true.
Source: Nintendo
