David Ewalt: The way the holiday season is shaping up this year, your competitors have brand new hardware, and their argument to consumers is going to be “look at this fancy new machine.” Your pitch for the holiday season is “look at these franchises, these are the games you want.” How do you rate your chances?
Reggie Fils-Aime: We rate our chances very good. Software drives hardware in this business. We see it time and time again. We saw it with our Wii and DS businesses. We’re seeing it right now with Nintendo 3DS. It was probably a year ago, I was having similar meetings to these, when the challenge was, “Reggie, what are you doing with your handheld business? How are you gonna grow it?” Well, we bring our great franchises to bear, and watch what happens. Software drives hardware. And we’re having a stellar year. We believe the same will happen with our Wii U business, with these fantastic franchises that we’re bringing to bear this holiday.
I agree that software drives hardware. But this is also an industry where people tend to become distracted by shiny new objects.
That’s very true. But the interesting thing there is, if you look at the last two hardware cycles, it was not the most powerful machine that won, not in the case of the PS2, not in the case of the Wii. So, in the end, it’s our responsibility to show consumers how much fun you can have, because in the end, this is an entertainment business, and we think we’ve got stellar entertainment to make the consumer smile.When the Wii U launched last year, a lot of people didn’t understand it was a whole new console. Are you still dealing with that mistaken perception?
That issue has been largely addressed, I think, as we’ve told consumers all the great things you could do with the GamePad as we’ve showed fantastic software like Pikmin 3, and Wonderful 101, Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker in HD. The consumer I believe now understands this is a brand new system with brand new capabilities. It has all of the benefits of backward compatibility. And we’re the only next gen system with backward compatibility, so the consumer has this great library of games from Wii, can use them with the Wii U. But now they understand all of the new capabilities that they can have.
Has your relationship with the big publishers changed since the Wii U came out, and now that there are two new competing consoles, how do you get them to stick with developing –and especially developing exclusive content– for the Wii U?
It’s all about driving the installed base. With a healthy and vibrant installed base, those key publishers are gonna create content that are going to be wonderful for the system. Case in point: Activision. One of the number one rated games [recently] on the Wii U is Skylander SWAP Force. They’ve done a stellar job creating that content. And absolutely we look forward to Call of Duty coming on the platform. A true Call of Duty experience, leveraging unique play with the GamePad. You look at someone like Ubisoft. They do tremendous business with Just Dance on our platform. And we look forward to Assassin’s Creed, we look forward to Watchdogs next year coming on the platform. Warner Brothers… I could go through the list in terms of key software publishers that are making great content for the platform. And what they tell me every day is, “Reggie, how can I help you drive your installed base?”
So you’re not worried about developers saying, “Oh, well, I’ve got a much faster processor on these other boxes. I can do more with this.”
In the end, what developers want is a healthy ecosystem to create content and launch it into. And that’s what we’ve gotta deliver. And we’re fortunate we’re delivering that right now with Nintendo 3DS, which is why we have so many publishers excited about that platform. We need to do that now with Wii U. And it’s gonna be key franchises like Mario 3D World, like Zelda: Wind Waker that are gonna help us drive that during this holiday time.
http://www.forbes.co...holiday-season/
Oh, reggie.
