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http://www.glixel.com/interviews/nintendo-of-america-boss-talks-comebacks-3ds-and-esports-w488029
Cool interview, you can tell he and Iwata talked a lot. Also basically confirms Nintendo has moved on from the Wii U AND Wii/DS eras and are focusing on other things now.
Can we talk about the journey Nintendo has been on? The Switch is out now, and it's a success. The Wii U was tough for Nintendo. What's it been like this past year?
Let me go even further back. When I joined Nintendo, we had Game Boy Advance – that was going great guns – and we had Gamecube and I joined just after Gamecube had been price-reduced down to $99. Just within the same timeframe having one platform that's doing exceptionally well and another not, it gave me an opportunity to learn in terms of "okay, how do you manage through cycles?" Because this business is a cyclical business – some days you're up, some days you're down.
And you can't control what the competition is doing...
Right. You can't. And even to that point, I remember having a conversation with Mr Iwata and asking him directly "what was is like when at an E3, all Sony did was mention that they were working on a PlayStation portable device and our stock I think took something like a 15 percent haircut?" So, then we transition from then to the DS and Wii generation – to massive, massive devices. The DS over its life sold over 150 million hardware units and the Wii over 100 million. There were years that from a Nintendo of America perspective, we were selling 20 million pieces of hardware. Just Nintendo of America. Then we transitioned to the 3DS and the Wii U generation and the 3DS – though it was slow out the gate – as we sit here today is 66 million units sold as of our last reporting. So certainly, a healthy, vibrant business. So, what does this all mean? Well, first it means that this company has been around the block and knows what it's like to have systems that people just can't wait to get their hands on and others that maybe aren't comparable. What we talk about internally is that you can't get too excited when things are going really well, and you can't get too depressed when things are not, because just one game make the difference. One game.
What we hear from you a lot, Reggie, is that there's a continuity to Nintendo – but it really feels of late as if Nintendo is changing. It does seem as if you're much more reactive to the world and aware of the bigger picture and making connections. There was this sense that Nintendo, for many years, was somewhat in a bubble and it doesn't feel that way anymore. There's an English term – "bloody-minded" which means stubborn, and that used to be a pretty good characterization of Nintendo.
Here's what I would say: Today's Nintendo continues to focus on unique, differentiated, experiences. That is core to the company. However, where we've shifted is that ten years ago we were focused on growing the gaming universe, expanding the audience. And that's what the Wii and DS did. Over the past five years, with smart device gaming and everything else, everyone's gaming now, in some way, shape or form. And so what we needed to do was we needed to shift our vision to something that we could deliver against, but also to something that was meaningful and differentiated. And that new vision is about leveraging our IP to make people smile. And we're going to do that four ways.
We're going to continue to do it with dedicated gaming devices – we will always be part of dedicated gaming. We're also going to do it with smart devices, whether it's Pokémon Go in partnership with the Pokémon Company, Super Mario Run or Fire Emblem. What Fire Emblem has done in terms of expose the Fire Emblem franchise has been phenomenal. And so with Animal Crossing and future endeavors, it's about enabling more and more people to experience our IP.
