Posted January 31, 2013 Full Briefing Transcript: http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/library/events/130131/index.html Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted January 31, 2013 (edited) All I can say is there is plenty of humility in that transcript and they certainly do know they have messed up with the wii u so far. Shame lessons were not really learnt after the 3DS launch and we are going through this process again. Edited January 31, 2013 by liger05 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted January 31, 2013 I wonder why they even mention shipped figures at all then. That'll be an interesting figure, this is pretty redundant. The figures they released are the same that they ALWAYS have. It's only now people are going on that they're "shipped" figures Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted January 31, 2013 How am I supposed to know that? My point/question still stands, why even mention 'shipped' units if you're going to release proper sales numbers? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted January 31, 2013 (edited) How am I supposed to know that? My point/question still stands, why even mention 'shipped' units if you're going to release proper sales numbers? Those figures are meant for their shareholders, not you. It doesn't matter if you don't know the difference as long as they do... Anywho, that's one meaty transcript! With a lot of revelations in there! (some points probably could do with their own thread actually) 2012 Hardware Sales EUROPE JAPAN US TOTAL PS3 4,343,500 1,223,699 3,410,000 8,977,000 360 3,015,500 77,789 5,320,000 8,413,000 WII 2,042,000 475,615 1,960,000 4,478,000 WIU 425,000 627,287 890,000 1,942,000 So the UK accounted for 18.8% of their total EU sales. Pretty much the same as the 3DSxl then... 3DS OG + XL UK Sales debut week - 15.0003DS OG + XL European Sales debut week - 92.000 Ratio UK / Europe - 16,3% Wii U UK First Weeks - 80.000 Wii U European First Weeks - 430.000 Ratio UK / Europe - 18,6% I see why they dropped their forecast now. They've got 1 million units sitting on store shelves worldwide right now and no big game releases to sell them with... It's gonna be a rough Q1 for them... Good thing that this is when the 3DS starts its takeoff in the west! Edited January 31, 2013 by Dcubed Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted January 31, 2013 (edited) Those figures are meant for their shareholders, not you. It doesn't matter if you don't know the difference as long as they do... Anywho, that's one meaty transcript! With a lot of revelations in there! (some points probably could do with their own thread actually) So the UK accounted for 18.8% of their total EU sales. Pretty much the same as the 3DSxl then... I see why they dropped their forecast now. They've got 1 million units sitting on store shelves worldwide right now and no big game releases to sell them with... It's gonna be a rough Q1 for them... Good thing that this is when the 3DS starts its takeoff in the west! I think Iwata may resign. I am not saying he should go but it wouldnt shock me if he did. Q1 is going to be a bloodbath but nintendo have IP's to get things going in the right direction. Still does not excuse the shocking Q1 software release schedule. We need some news on th 3rd party situation as I am fearing the worst. Edited January 31, 2013 by liger05 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted January 31, 2013 I think Iwata may resign. I am not saying he should go but it wouldnt shock me if he did. I know he presided over the first financial loss in the companies history, but I hope that having the DS and Wii's (3DS to a lesser extent at the moment) huge success under his leadership count for something, in his own mind mainly. YOU ARE A SUCCESS SATORU! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted January 31, 2013 I think Iwata may resign. I am not saying he should go but it wouldnt shock me if he did. Q1 is going to be a bloodbath but nintendo have IP's to get things going in the right direction. Still does not excuse the shocking Q1 software release schedule. We need some news on th 3rd party situation as I am fearing the worst. This is a Japanese company, not an American one. They don't fix problems by thinking "Oh, let's just have the head quit" Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted January 31, 2013 (edited) Q1 is going to be a bloodbath but nintendo have IP's to get things going in the right direction. Still does not excuse the shocking Q1 software release schedule. We need some news on th 3rd party situation as I am fearing the worst. Well Iwata did say that there was gonna be a Nintendo Direct focused on 3rd party titles later on during the last one at least... That being said I have to agree with you. It's looking pretty terrible... As for Iwata's position, I really doubt that he's going anywhere any time soon. Let's not forget the shambling wreck that is Square-Enix and the fact that Wada is still CEO, despite running the company to the ground :p Think about it, who would replace him? Nobody has been primed to take his place! He's had plenty of success as CEO. A couple of poor years is not going to erase all of that so easily (not to mention that they're out of the red now, with the 3DS now making a profit on each unit sold and the Wii U sure to do so too pretty soon) Edited January 31, 2013 by Dcubed Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted January 31, 2013 It's really looking horrific moving forward for the Wii U. I think it will sell pretty well, I think there'll be some amazing games, but i think the 3rd party support is going to be the worst it has ever been for Nintendo. It's going to be an ultimate exclusive machine, but even more than last gen, and it was the most important it's ever been then, to truly experience the gaming industry you're going to need 2 consoles. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted January 31, 2013 (edited) It's really looking horrific moving forward for the Wii U. I think it will sell pretty well, I think there'll be some amazing games, but i think the 3rd party support is going to be the worst it has ever been for Nintendo. It's going to be an ultimate exclusive machine, but even more than last gen, and it was the most important it's ever been then, to truly experience the gaming industry you're going to need 2 consoles. Outside of Ubisoft and Activision, I think that the western 3rd parties are a lost cause. They're just too set in their ways now and are determined to walk the path of industry destruction. Perhaps it's time to bring back the idea of the N64 "Dream Team"? Cut off ties with EA and Take Two (implicitly of course, certainly not publically!) and engage in some sweetheart deals with the remaining publishers (Activision, Ubisoft, WB and the other smaller ones). Simultaneously, they should help build up the indie development community (and the developers who are actually supporting them). They've made great inroads already with them (the Unity/Autodesk deals were a stroke of genius and seem to have done wonders for eShop support), now they just need to power them up! Lend them funds and support and try and get the likes of Mojang to make something exclusive for them! For the Japanese developers... well we don't really know what's happening there in terms of support. They seem to be on good terms with Capcom, SEGA, Atlus, Tecmo Koei and Namco and they've got the Dragon Quest franchise sown up nicely (though DQ11 will almost certainly be heading for the 3DS rather than the Wii U...), though who knows what's happening with S-E these days and their nonsensical attitude towards consoles/mobile/handhelds/life. It's the smaller JPN devs that still take issue with them like Gust, Falcom etc and the lack of eShop support from JPN devs that is still of some concern. Otherwise, the only thing they really need to do with them is to shoulder some of the risks of localisation (they're only just now doing it with 3DS, but this may also need to extend to the Wii U). Edited January 31, 2013 by Dcubed Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted January 31, 2013 (edited) Well Iwata did say that there was gonna be a Nintendo Direct focused on 3rd party titles later on during the last one at least... That being said I have to agree with you. It's looking pretty terrible... Hopefully we will get some good news with that direct and not just information about old ports. Need new third party games when they release for the 360/PS3. Outside of Ubisoft and Activision, I think that the western 3rd parties are a lost cause. They're just too set in their ways now and are determined to walk the path of industry destruction. The thing is third parties will decide if they need the Wii U to sell there games. They have the PS3/360 and beyond to do that so its a question of whether they believe the resources needed for a Wii U version is cost effective. Edited January 31, 2013 by liger05 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted January 31, 2013 (edited) Except he isn't doing that, is he? Serebii has mentioned and acknowledged mitigating factors for other consoles several times over the course of this thread. In fact, one of his most frequent arguments has been that ALL console launches are share similar sales patterns, drop-offs etc. I really think people have gotten into a knee-jerk response with his posts. There's some very twisted and selective logic going on here and lots of pot calling kettle! He's added a lot of valuable counter-balance to some of the overly alarmist statements that get thrown around unchecked - whether they're 'defending' or not is really irrelevant if we want to have a sensible debate and consideration of all factors. I bring it up because he is always the first to play the mitigating circumstances card as to why somethings on the Wii U are not what would be expected - whether that be sales, system performance or the future games outlook. When people bring up that this also affected other systems, he concurs and yet the other systems still weren't plagued by the same faults despite some of the same mitagating factors. He brings up certain phrases from developers and often, these are just "official statements" designed to put a nice spin on their view of the system and to not piss off Nintendo. It's not really the truth and it's pretty darn obvious it isn't either. He's always there with an excuse and if he hasn't seen it, it doesn't exist full stop despite everyone else noticing. He then insults us by trying to say he's the only person who understands trends. Amongst all the doom mongering, his blind devotation without sound reason is equally frustrating. He will come out with some good points but it gets twitsed and lost amongst the fanboyism. Anyway, back to the sales chatter... The only interesting thing here is the European numbers. We already had the US and Japan sell through figures since they always get reported and Nintendo went so far as to release a statement about the US performance. Coupled to the shipped figures released yesterday, we could already see it's sell through was only about 67% in the US. Admittedly, I'm sure a higher percertage of those could well be the Basic model but it certainly puts pay to any idea about a lack of availablity that affected other launches. Japan launched well but this post New Year slump is starting to go below trends if it keeps up along it's current course. As for EU, hopefully, those numbers show that the UK isn't some sub 10% market share that we should be completely disregarding when talking about performance in the sector. We've had pages and pages of how the UK counts for nothing and yet that clearly isn't true. Looking through the investor slides, I did think it was a little unfair how they blamed so much of the total US market decline on the performance of the other systems when the biggest drops were caused by rapidly slowing sales of Nintendo's legacy systems. Otherwise they showed great humility as is typical for both Nintendo and Japanese companies in general. Edited January 31, 2013 by Captain Falcon Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted January 31, 2013 I bring it up because he is always the first to play the mitigating circumstances card as to why somethings on the Wii U are not what would be expected - whether that be sales, system performance or the future games outlook. When people bring up that this also affected other systems, he concurs and yet the other systems still weren't plagued by the same faults despite some of the same mitagating factors. He brings up certain phrases from developers and often, these are just "official statements" designed to put a nice spin on their view of the system and to not piss off Nintendo. It's not really the truth and it's pretty darn obvious it isn't either. He's always there with an excuse and if he hasn't seen it, it doesn't exist full stop despite everyone else noticing. He then insults us by trying to say he's the only person who understands trends. Amongst all the doom mongering, his blind devotation without sound reason is equally frustrating. He will come out with some good points but it gets twitsed and lost amongst the fanboyism. Anyway, back to the sales chatter... The only interesting thing here is the European numbers. We already had the US and Japan sell through figures since they always get reported and Nintendo went so far as to release a statement about the US performance. Coupled to the shipped figures released yesterday, we could already see it's sell through was only about 67% in the US. Admittedly, I'm sure a higher percertage of those could well be the Basic model but it certainly puts pay to any idea about a lack of availablity that affected other launches. Japan launched well but this post New Year slump is starting to go below trends if it keeps up along it's current course. As for EU, hopefully, those numbers show that the UK isn't some sub 10% market share that we should be completely disregarding when talking about performance in the sector. We've had pages and pages of how the UK counts for nothing and yet that clearly isn't true. Looking through the investor slides, I did think it was a little unfair how they blamed so much of the total US market decline on the performance of the other systems when the biggest drops were caused by rapidly slowing sales of Nintendo's legacy systems. Otherwise they showed great humility as is typical for both Nintendo and Japanese companies in general. The mentioned the bundles by the competition as well which to me isn’t really something to blame as everyone knew that MS and Sony were going to offer cheap bundles when the wii u dropped. Just how Nintendo will probably do the same when they have a big IP when the next gen consoles launch. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted January 31, 2013 The mentioned the bundles by the competition as well which to me isn’t really something to blame as everyone knew that MS and Sony were going to offer cheap bundles when the wii u dropped. Just how Nintendo will probably do the same when they have a big IP when the next gen consoles launch. Even without bundles, the other 2 machines, and their games, were sufficiently cheaper to offer more immediate value per unit of currency spent and that was always going to be an unavoidable fact at launch - and that's before special discounted bundles. I think it's fair to say it impacted performance but then they really should have taken it into consideration when forecasting their own sales so to blame it after the fact as if to suggest it was an unexpected influence is a bit weak. But that could be us just reading a touch too much into the written words - maybe it was expressed with more clarity by Iwata himself during the actual brief and has been lost in the transcribe. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted January 31, 2013 (edited) Really struggling in Europe. Every week during the holidays sales just kept going down and now in Q1 it cant be much better. Vita is dead. PSP outselling it every week of the year. Looks the Wii U is selling similar to what the Vita is selling which is awful!! The 3DS really isnt do too bad in Europe and very strong in France! Edited January 31, 2013 by liger05 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted January 31, 2013 Vita is dead. PSP outselling it every week of the year. Looks the Wii U is selling similar to what the Vita is selling which is awful!! Whilst Vita sales are below PSP sales, look at how close the numbers are. Since they first started reporting on Vita sales, Sony have consistantly said how they've struggled to convert PSP sales into PSV sales and this kinda shows. If they could get all customers to only buy the Vita, and so have the PSP drop off altogether, the sales wouldn't be that bad at all and would have been roughly inline with total PSP sales for 2011 which was before the Vita showed up. Certainly not an easy task given the Vita is 2.5x the cost of a PSP and a slim games lineup but if Sony can get the figures to that point, I'm sure they'll be more than happy as the 3DS isn't doing monumentally better. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted January 31, 2013 Whilst Vita sales are below PSP sales, look at how close the numbers are. Since they first started reporting on Vita sales, Sony have consistantly said how they've struggled to convert PSP sales into PSV sales and this kinda shows. If they could get all customers to only buy the Vita, and so have the PSP drop off altogether, the sales wouldn't be that bad at all and would have been roughly inline with total PSP sales for 2011 which was before the Vita showed up. Certainly not an easy task given the Vita is 2.5x the cost of a PSP and a slim games lineup but if Sony can get the figures to that point, I'm sure they'll be more than happy as the 3DS isn't doing monumentally better. Maybe they need it cracked lol so people can get free games again. I dont see how sony turn the vita around. NFS. COD and AC did nothing to push hardware. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted January 31, 2013 Maybe they need it cracked lol so people can get free games again. I dont see how sony turn the vita around. NFS. COD and AC did nothing to push hardware. Well CoD was a distaster from day 1 and really was an insult to the hardware and to the people it convinced (read: conned) into buying the machine. It doesn't need any more stuff like that. AC was step in the right direction but still ended up as a failed experiment in game design. And NFS, as incredibly impressive as it is, is just the same as the console version and if you already own a HD console, you aren't going to buy a Vita just for that when you already own appropriate hardware. It's a chicken and egg situation here, like Iwata said the 3DS was outside Japan, except for the Vita, it's a worldwide problem and whereas the 3DS can leverage Japanese games to try and break the cycle outside their home country, those games don't exist for the PSV. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted January 31, 2013 This is a Japanese company, not an American one. They don't fix problems by thinking "Oh, let's just have the head quit" The irony being that it is the culture in Japanese business to take responsibility, and often people do step down (for example, Ken Kutaragi "retiring" after the PS3's disastrous launch) - and Microsoft where Steve Ballmer has been called out to an embarrassing degree, most notably in Forbes, for being a dinosaur and just generally incompetent; yet Ballmer refuses to step down. So yeah...what you on about? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted January 31, 2013 The irony being that it is the culture in Japanese business to take responsibility, and often people do step down (for example, Ken Kutaragi "retiring" after the PS3's disastrous launch) - and Microsoft where Steve Ballmer has been called out to an embarrassing degree, most notably in Forbes, for being a dinosaur and just generally incompetent; yet Ballmer refuses to step down. So yeah...what you on about? Howard Stringer was also pretty much kicked out his job as top brass at Sony to satisfy shareholders if I recall correctly before Kaz stepped in. Iwata already slashed his wage, and that of the other board members, after the 3DS failed to take off. His position isn't untenable yet, but he's coming up against some big obstacles that he has little control over. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted January 31, 2013 You may be right. I get the vibe while Stringer was moving in the right direction by unifying the company he just wasn't doing it fast enough. I think Kaz is a great choice, just from what he said about personally overseeing and fast-tracking projects he felt needed prioritising. But whether he can actually pull it off is a completely different thing. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted January 31, 2013 The thing with Sony and MS though is that there were/are potential candidates who could replace the likes of Stringer fairly easily, not to mention that Stringer's failings were far greater than Iwata - nor did he have any big success to call his own. Iwata's position is far from untenable, especially considering that the reasons for Nintendo's financial woes over the last couple of years were largely due to highly extrenuous circumstances with the 3DS price cut and Wii U R&D costs as well as an unprecedented strengthening of the yen. With all that out of the way, Nintendo have gotten through the worst of it. They're only making a small loss on the Wii U hardware and that'll be chipped away within this financial year for sure. Not to mention that this year will see the 3DS take off like a rocket in the west, as the release schedule finally catches up with Japan. They'll be printing pure money off that hardware, even if the Wii U chugs along at a sluggish pace Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted January 31, 2013 I do love how serious this thread is. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted January 31, 2013 The thing with Sony and MS though is that there were/are potential candidates who could replace the likes of Stringer fairly easily, not to mention that Stringer's failings were far greater than Iwata - nor did he have any big success to call his own. Iwata's position is far from untenable, especially considering that the reasons for Nintendo's financial woes over the last couple of years were largely due to highly extrenuous circumstances with the 3DS price cut and Wii U R&D costs as well as an unprecedented strengthening of the yen. With all that out of the way, Nintendo have gotten through the worst of it. They're only making a small loss on the Wii U hardware and that'll be chipped away within this financial year for sure. Not to mention that this year will see the 3DS take off like a rocket in the west, as the release schedule finally catches up with Japan. They'll be printing pure money off that hardware, even if the Wii U chugs along at a sluggish pace Well the 3DS price cut was down to a badly prepared launch and lack of preparation. I like Iwata but its 2 bad launches on the trot now and the same mistakes being made. The Wii U seems rushed even though it wasn’t. They had 2 years to make sure the product would have the best launch possible and didn’t take advantage of that. In no way am I pinning it all on him as even in the US Reggie and co have a lot to answer for as well. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
