http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/stock/meeting/140627qa/index.html
Some selected portions for your convenience:
"The “Nintendo Digital Event,” which we broadcast on the morning of the first day of E3, was viewed 4 to 5 million times, and the total views of our E3-related videos numbered in the tens of millions. This means that our messages reached a large number of people all over the world through the Internet, not only the people who attended E3 events."
"Every year a number of companies exhibit at E3 and Nintendo is compared with other companies, most likely with Sony and Microsoft. This year, the majority of what the other developers exhibited was bloody shooter software that was mainly set in violent surroundings or, in a different sense, realistic and cool worlds. Because so many software developers are competing in that category, it seemed like most of the titles at the show were of that kind. In such circumstances, Nintendo looked very unique and was able to receive such positive reactions as “Nintendo had a variety of different software” and “the company is offering games we can feel safe with.” From this aspect of differentiation with the other companies, we had a great E3 show this year."
" I suspect that software makers that develop game software (for advanced game players) for the game systems from Microsoft and Sony must have actually been having a harder time than we think. It takes a year for the development teams to get used to high-performance graphics using recent shader technology, and afterwards it requires two or three times the time and labor costs to develop a game. According to one theory, since some projects even require the budgets of over 10 billion yen, not all projects will be profitable. It is a harsh world, in which a game can hardly survive if it doesn’t make it into the top ten of the sales rankings"
"This fiscal year, in order to change the situation in which we have incurred operating losses for three consecutive years and to build a profit structure, we would like to aim for increases in both sales and profit by restoring the balance of revenue and expenses as our top priority. To be more specific, we would like to achieve the sales of 590 billion yen compared to 571.7 billion yen in the last fiscal year and the operating profit of 40 billion yen compared to an operating loss of 46.4 billion yen in the last fiscal year. Since over 43 million units of Nintendo 3DS hardware were sold globally, we would like to release many software titles this year as well to inspire consumers to buy many of them. We made a big forecast for Wii U hardware sales at the beginning of the last fiscal year, but the actual sales units were only 2.72 million. As Mr. Miyamoto explained, we will work to communicate the value of the Wii U GamePad in order to vitalize the Wii U platform, and propose a new play style for Wii U. Also, since we have such titles this year as “Mario Kart 8” and “Super Smash Bros. for Wii U,” which are indeed reassuring titles for us, we would like to boost sales of Wii U mainly with these titles."
"The integration of development environments is quite technical, but in short, it is whether you use Nintendo’s original developing tool or a computer with readily available, standard developing tools when you develop video games for Nintendo platforms. Though we always try to create unique software content, we believe it would be efficient if we could integrate development tools. So, we are trying to gradually move toward the standard development tools from so-called “native” tools unique to Nintendo."
"I would like to explain our approach toward the third-party software developers. As for the current numbers of software developers for our platforms, in the U.S. there are about 40 companies developing software for Nintendo 3DS, and about 20 companies for Wii U. The numbers of developers are almost the same in Europe. If we add companies that develop downloadable software to these numbers, in the U.S., there are about 130 companies for Nintendo 3DS and about 200 companies for Wii U. In Europe, there are about 160 companies for Nintendo 3DS and as for Wii U, about 115 companies. And in Japan, there are about 140 companies for Nintendo 3DS and about 35 companies for Wii U."
" Thank you for reading “Iwata Asks.” Actually, Mr. Iwata’s physical condition has nothing to do with the reduced update frequency of these articles. Since over half a year ago, we have been discussing our methods of disseminating information to understand to what extent “Iwata Asks” has been able to deliver our information directly to our consumers. As a result, we came up with the idea that Nintendo should try to attract a more broad audience through a wider range of methods. That is the reason why Mr. Iwata has not been updating “Iwata Asks” as frequently. As Mr. Yamato said, we are aiming for broader communication with consumers in ways that are more diverse from now on."
