Miitomo

Nintendo’s investor meeting reveals more than just games

In Tokyo, Japan at 10:00 A.M. the Wall Street Journal reported in a Nintendo strategy meeting for its investors to talk about topics ranging from its financial status and future plans. For those excited about game details such as Pikmin 4 or the rumored Twilight Princess HD you probably will have to hold on your Mario cap a bit longer because this meeting did not involve any information on Nintendo’s bigger titles.

At the beginning of the meeting, the CEO Tatsumi Kimishima stated that there are more titles coming this holiday for the Wii U and 3DS that have not been announced yet. One of the groups that some of these games will be focusing on is women as the company has noticed that 70% of Animal Crossing fans in Japan are Women.

The group then went into sales, stating that Super Mario Maker reached 1 million sales in three weeks and that Splatoon was a huge hit for the system which dramatically increased hardware sales. Besides software, the company stated that Amiibo figures had hit 21.1 million sales at the end of September and that the number was 14.7 million in June. They apologized for the Animal Crossing amiibo cards draught, stating that they can’t keep up with the demand for them and new shipments would be starting today. The chart shown at the meeting is the percentage of Amiibo sales between countries, blue being North America, red being Japan, and green being Europe.

nintendosusplide

A slide from the presentation showing off Nintendo’s roster including a familiar looking Link.

 

Once the sales were out of the way Nintendo announced their new membership service called “Nintendo Account”. This service will connect Nintendo users across all hardware including console, mobile, PC and smart device users. This service will not only connect them socially but it will also use cloud-based data to transfer game data between mobile and console games. They stated that their smartphone games have been delayed but they will launch in March 2016 with a hope of a global launch.

The first and only “game” announcement from the company was for their first smartphone title named “Miitomo”. This title will be free to play with add ons that people can pay for while user Miis go and communicate with other Miis independent of a user’s control. The goal of this game is for “people who are hesitant to talk about themselves and communicate with others”. Miimoto will be the first of five smart device games that are released between 2016 and 2017.

The meeting ended with questions about the new Nintendo hardware NX but Nintendo only stated that they “are going to be far more aggressive in using our IP and not just stop with licensing, as in the past.”