Posted Wed Jan 29, 2014 at 09:15 PM PST by Brian Hoss
"if you report that we will release Mario on smart devices, it would be a completely misleading statement."
Nintendo's trials continue as the iconic video game maker comes to terms with difficult losses. Today amid a week of rumors, the company gave a presentation to outline the resulting corporate strategy.
Here are the highlights:
First off, Nintendo has had success being Nintendo and offering unique experiences and that shall continue. That means leveraging the company's ability to deliver great video games when in control of both the software and hardware. If the company were to focus only on software, it would not be utilizing its strength.
Speaking of strengths, Nintendo has failed to correctly feature the Wii U's unique GamePad abilities. The company will focus harder on making the GamePad a unique offering and one that will help the Wii/Wii U consumer confusion. Once example is the GamePad's NFC capability, which is now ready to precede forward on a bigger scale (more at E3).
The Wii U experience will be enhanced by an update the enables fast Wii U start-up through a new Fast Boot menu, which shortcuts to recent software (cut start time in half.)
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Virtual Console DS games are coming to the Wii U.
Mario Kart 8 will be released worldwide this May.
The Nintendo Network ID on the Wii U was the first step to moving beyond a per-device basis to per-account. Now it is on the 3DS, and will be the basis for customer accounts going forward.
Nintendo will develop a Nintendo app, but will not port games to smart devices:
(Translation from Kotaku,)
Many people say that releasing Nintendo's software assets for smart devices would expand our business. However, we believe that we cannot show our strength as an integrated hardware-software business in this field, and therefore it would difficult to continue the same scale of business in the medium- to long term.
Therefore, we would like to, instead of directly expanding our business on smart devices, focus on achieving greater ties with our consumers on smart devices and expanding our platform business.
However, creating stronger ties with consumers would require them to engage with our offers frequently. As we know that this is not an easy task to achieve,
We will use a small, select team of developers to achieve it. Also, we recognize that attracting consumers' attention among the myriads of mobile applications is not easy, and as I said before, we feel that simply releasing our games just as they are on smart devices would not provide the best entertainment for smart devices, so we are not going to take any approach of this nature. Having said that, however, in the current environment surrounding smart devices, we feel that we will not be able to gain the support of many consumers unless we are able to provide something truly valuable that is unique to Nintendo. Accordingly, I have not given any restrictions to the development team, even not ruling out the possibility of making games or using our game characters. However, if you report that we will release Mario on smart devices, it would be a completely misleading statement. It is our intention to release some application on smart devices this year that is capable of attracting consumer attention and communicating the value of our entertainment offerings, so I would encourage you to see how our approach yields results.
Nintendo will license IP out both for the purpose of making games and merchandise, but Nintendo will retain its usual oversight.
Nintendo is working on a new paltforms designed specifically to improve quality of life - QOL Platform will expand on concepts for titles like 'Touch Generations' and 'Wii Fit.'
Also, Nintendo is working on a non-wearable, wearable.
Source: Nintendo
Author: Brian Hoss
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