Nintendo Investor Meeting

Yesterday Nintendo held one of their investor briefings. Apart from new numbers of sold Wii-Us and 3DS, we also got some very interesting news for the future of the company. But first let us start with some information on sales.

In the first half of this fiscal year (01. April 2015 – 30. September 2015) Nintendo made 86.18 Million Euros (95.22 Million Dollars) in profits.

They also sold 1.19 Million Wii-U consoles (a slight increase over last year with 1.12 Million), bringing the console up to 10.73 Million sold world wide.

The 3DS family sold 2.28 Million consoles in the same time frame, bringing them to a total of 54.34 Million Units sold.

Nintendo also announced that so far 21.1 Million Amiibo have been shipped to retailers. This, together with 8.6 Million Amiibo cards shipped, establishes the figurines as a strong source of income in Nintendos portfolio.

But we're not here to just talk about numbers, because they also announced two important bits of information.

MyNintendo:

Now we finally know what the successor to Club Nintendo is like. The new system will be simply called My Nintendo. With this the company finally fully arrives in the modern era. My Nintendo will work with the new Nintendo Account system, which makes it easier than ever to connect with the world of Nintendo. This account can be connected to your Nintendo ID, Facebook, Twitter, etc. The goal is to make it simple and easy. The Nintendo account will then allow you to make global friend lists, buy games, take a look at your purchase history and save your progress and scores to the cloud. It can be accessed from your tablet, PC, phone and of course your Nintendo consoles.

MyNintendo will work similar to the old club Nintendo. You still earn points for games you bought, but also for playing them. With these points you then can buy various things, ranging from digital content like 3DS Themes or costumes to actual physical goodies. Just like in the old Club Nintendo.

For now that is all the news we got on MyNintendo, but it sounds very promising. The Nintendo account was long overdue. Transferring savegames into the cloud is a standard practice for PS and X-Box users already. As is a account bound purchase history. No more hardware bound digital purchases. They didn't announce any kind of cross buy feature, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did so in the future. All in all the Nintendo account is a long overdue step into the right direction.

When the club Nintendo shut down, everyone was wondering what would come next. MyNintendo feels like a evolution of the old concept. It provides the charm of the old Club Nintendo, with the ability to still buy physical collectibles, but moves it fully to the digital age. I'm very intrigued about the possibility to earn points by playing games. Maybe this ties into some sort of achievment system. Looking at the X-Box and PlayStation we can see that a Trophy System or GamerScore provides a strong motivation to play, and by that extension, buy games. Some people buy games only to increase their GamerScore. And whether you find this sad or it doesn't concern you, as a company Nintendo should take a good look at this customers. Providing an actual use for the accumulated points most certainly will increase the appeal, and in turn lead to more people buying games. You shouldn't underestimate the greed of the common man, when there is a possibility to save money.

Being able to buy DLC with these points is a win-win situation for everyone. People, who wouldn't take a look at it otherwise, get the chance to play the DLC, while others, who don't have the patience, can still simply buy it. Meanwhile Nintendo increases the people, who own the DLC, binding them to their game and system longer.

Now all they have to do is not fall into the trap of locking more and more content behind an arbitrary ''Point Wall''.

Miitomo:

The news about MyNintendo weren't the only ones we got. Nintendo President Tatsumi Kimishima also announced their first smart phone game. Miitomo will launch in March 2016 and is more of an application than a game. It allows your Mii to connect with other Miis. The goal of Miitomo is to connect people and help shy persons come out of their shell a little. You'll send your Mii out to meet other Miis and talk about various topics, and maybe you meet some person this way.

Now many where disappointed with this announcement. They expected something Mario or Zelda like, but if you think about it, Miitomo makes perfect sense. Nintendo always said that their Smartphone games will not compete with their traditional consoles. Secondly they still work on their Quality of life project. And thirdly... Japan.

Miitomo is a very Japanese app. This country is dealing with the problem of more and more people becoming shut in. Especially young males. They just remove themselves from society. Miitomos Goal is to help these people connect and hopefully take part in the real world again. I wouldn't be surprised if Miitomo will integrate itself into the Quality of Life Project in the future.

We also got the news that Miitomo is free to play and will contain Micro Transactions, but it will be the only Nintendo Smartphone game using this business model. The other four games that will be available till March 2017 will be sold in a classic sense.

For me Miitomo doesn't sound appealing, but I'm also completely uninterested in any kind of Smartphone game.

In the end this was one of the more interesting Investor Meetings. We got a glimpse into Nintendos future plans, and for everyone waiting for more Game centric News, we still got a new Nintendo Direct planned for this year. So you can look forward to that.

What were your thoughts about the Meeting? Are you looking forward to MyNintendo? Does Miitomo catch your interest? Let me know.

And as always

thanks for reading

Source for all pictures: Nintendo