A review snippet of the IFC interview with Reggie Fils-Aime…
IFC: You know, I feel like the last few “Zelda” games have hinged on an axis mechanism that the game is organized around. Whether it’s “Twilight Princess” with the light and dark, or “Wind Waker” with the sailing. Do you feel like there is a core part of the series at this point?
RFA: I think it is.
IFC: And in “Ocarina of Time,” you had the different time periods and Link at different ages as the core mechanic in that game.
RFA: So, these two worlds are a key part of the Zelda franchise. And you know, being able to do certain things in world, different things in the other world — now, Mr. Newman, Mr. Miyamoto are the developers — but as a player, a lover of the franchise, to me, yes, those are core parts of the franchise.
IFC: Going back to larger strategy, it seems that, out the gate, you may not be having to support the 3DS when it comes out solely on the strength of first-party content. Comparing the 3DS to the Wii with regard to third-party partnerships, there appears to be a lot more partners on board pre-launch than with the Wii. But it also seems like that third parties may be necessarily supporting you guys on the Wii the way they did after launch. And this is something, again, that Mr. Iwata has said that maybe other publishers still don’t understand the Wii the way we do, how to create content for the consul. What would you have to say to that?
RFA: A couple of different things. First, you can clearly see a progression between DS, Wii and 3DS in terms of third party support. When we launched DS, there were number of developers there at the start, but they did not have content that really showcased the capabilities of the system in a big way.
There is a lot of different reasons for that, including maybe a little lack of belief, especially. Remember PSP was launching at the same time as the DS, and popular opinion was that it’s all about graphical horsepower. That was then. Now, jump to the Wii and there was a much broader line-up of support for the Wii right out of the gate. Pretty good support. (And at this point, the DS is still enjoying very strong sales momentum.) Now, with the 3DS, it’s become much more extensive, because I do believe developers know that our hardware approach and the input devices really will lead to compelling experiences. That’s one aspect [of how things have changed].
There is another aspect though that developers now, and publishers now, I think are just becoming to understand. We have got almost a 30 million unit install base on the Wii, and these consumers are different. They react differently when you launch content, compared to the more smaller install bases of our two competitors, which are predominantly very, very, very active gamers, right? And so you have a product like–I mean, pick one, “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2″, massive sale peak and then pretty rapid…
IFC: …decline?
RFA: Decline. That is not the sales curve that you see on the Wii. A title like “New Super Mario Brothers Wii” that sold five plus million units, it had a strong peak and then it stayed fairly high. The same thing “Wii Fit”, same thing with “Wii Fit Plus”, same with Super Mario Galaxy”. Hopefully, the same thing with “Super Mario Galaxy 2″. Publishers like Ubisoft saw that kind of curve with “Just Dance”.
The reason that the sales curve is important is it drives your marketing investment decisions. When you have got this massive spike and a massive fall down, everything is front-loaded. With something that’s more even, you have to spread your marketing investment, right? Spreading marketing investment [like that ] was not done on, you know, pick a third party publish title for Wii. Not one of them, with one exception, “Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games”, both summer and winter. And by the way, when you look at that sales curve, it looks more like a Nintendo first-party sales curve.
IFC: So you are saying publishers need to be prepared to have marketing support, not just at launch. But how long is that timeframe? I mean, when do you decide to call time-of-death? It could be like on a medical drama where they keep doing chest compressions on a dead body, you know?
RFA: You know, it’s intuitive, it’s based on game quality. I will give you an example, “Style Savvy,” that we launched last year on the DS. If I were a traditional publisher after the first couple of weeks, I might have pulled all my marketing support. Because the sales, you know, they didn’t go the way we thought it would go, didn’t come out of the gate like gangbusters. But, boy, that third week, we saw a nice big spike, fourth week spiked again. It’s a different type of sales curve.
Mr. Iwata has said that Nintendo’s core mission in creating content is to expand the gaming audience. What I’m hearing from you now is that if you are going to do that, it’s not just about like what’s on the platform or the technology in the platform, but also how you talk about it.
It’s everything, it really is a philosophy that yes, absolutely starts with the game, but then extends to system, it extends to the marketing approach, the communications approach, everything needs to be aligned. If you believe that, then apply that thinking to what our competitors are trying to do.
IFC: It’s funny, because “Kid Icarus” is one of those Nintendo properties that people have been champing at the bit for ages. You guys always marry these beloved first-party characters to new innovations of hardware. Is that just canny planning? What’s the idea behind that? I mean, why wasn’t Mario the character who was used to debut the 3DS versus lead character Pit from “Kid Icarus,” for instance?
RFA: Well, “Kid Icarus,” because of the flying and the ground battle, really is tailor-made for the 3D type of experience. There’s another way to think about this, though. I mean, yes, we are fortunate that we have a veritable vault of fantastic franchises. But the other thing that we pride ourselves is constantly looking for new experiences and new franchises. You know, I am absolutely looking forward to “Kid Icarus: Uprising.” But, the next game I personally will buy will be “Steel Diver,” because that’s another one that, to me, in a 3D environment plays exceptionally well.
IFC: I feel like consumers are so used to going into an online hub, be it an App Store or whatever, and getting their content that way. Do you guys feel confident in building such an infrastructure or are you going to leave it up to the partners, the movie studios and such?
RFA: Let’s take this out of specifically movies. One of the things I love about this company is that we constantly look at our performance, and even when we are dominating a particular generation, we look hard to say what can we do better. And as we sit here today, we know we have to do digital better. And so, we will do digital better. How that looks will be different than what current players do in digital.
Why? Because we’re compelled to innovate, we’re compelled to bring this experience forward in a way that in our view is more compelling for the consumer. And so, I can’t and I won’t give you the details of our digital strategy, but what I will tell you is that our digital strategy will be significantly more robust, significantly more compelling than what we have done today.
