Iwata:

  I think the key is the need of the market. Right after the announcement of DSi, after our partners in distribution understood the differences of DS Lite and DSi, most saw that DSi would be the core product in the market. When asked about the demands of each consoles this year, the felt far more DSi than DS Lite would be needed. Of course DS Lite is still needed. This is our understanding of the response.

  If we manufacture what is not demanded, we will have unnecessary inventories, and we have to avoid that. On the other hand, if there still is a demand for DS Lite, we should continue to manufacture them. But we have the same views on future demand as distributors and retailers do that a huge ratio of DS users will gravitate to DSi, and it will happen early especially within the Japanese market. We are not planning to stop the manufacturing of DS Lite despite existing demand.

  As for GameBoy Advance, we have not manufactured them recently, as we have not received any orders from distributors.

Iwata:

  To begin with, I basically do not think that an entertainment product can become a necessity, and if we were to structure it as a necessity, the future is not necessary stable.

  Because every business built on a single product which was once a necessity has been broken down by an innovative, disruptive technology. Thus it is often the case that every company whose life expectancy was long or used to be called an excellent or a visionary company will collapse 5 or 10 years later. So my understanding is that even if we make great efforts to make our product a necessity, Nintendo will not prosper in the long term.

  On the contrary, I think we have to keep developing without forgetting that we are producing what is ultimately unnecessary for life but how we can get customers to buy it nonetheless. Once we fail to do that, Nintendo will collapse in no time, regardless of how well we may be reputed today.

  It is a great honor to be told by people outside the company that we have a "mallet of luck", but I have no such recognition and we have struggled every year so far to get to where we are. Actually in history there are not many examples of a business growing so fast from 500 Billion Yen of sales grew 900 Billion, 1.6 Trillion and 2 Trillion; in spite of that, we have no recognition that we have a mallet of luck.

  The next round will be coming in the future. I have repeated that platform cycle should not be the same; on the other hand, I do not expect that DS and Wii will prosper as a platform forever. Something new will be needed in the future. As for what to do then, even if I did have an idea, I would have to keep all of them a secret now, as once any of them becomes public, every company will take countermeasures.

  People get surprised because they see what they never expected; dual screens were not expected to be a part of a portable gaming machine, nor was a bar-like remote expected to be swung as part of a game machine. Nobody would have ever thought that a videogame company would sell 10 million bathroom scales in a year! That's why our tactics have been effective.

  Thus in that sense, we have nothing to present to you in particular to convince you that Nintendo will be secure even 5 years from now to invest in us. (Even talking about our future ) may spoil the common benefit of our shareholders, please forgive us of our lack of concrete figures.

Iwata:

  As internal reports of pre-sells of DSi shows, the situation is not bad and I do not expect it to have a slow launch. I believe it is more attractive that a friend is playing or taking photo with DSi than any advertisement campaign.

  So it depends on the interaction the first DSi owners make to attract those around them if it can convince the existing DS owners "Now I had better own new DSi", along with appealing to new customers.

  The purpose of our design of DSi is to keep it as a symbolic icon, as if drawing two rectangles with displays are enough for it to be recognized as a DS. Our priority was not to change the design to motivate customers to buy a new one. In that sense, we will market them in a way that will convey the appeal of interaction with those around them by picking up and experiencing the DSi, not by its new design.

  One more thing is that, in the history of gaming business, there was a norm that hardware were launched at higher prices and gradually cut prices. As for software, so-called cheap editions were released for many titles after a certain time had passed from launch. Those ways may be suitable for some kinds of products. But Nintendo was doubtful that that was the sole way to market a product, and tried to find a new way of selling. As a consumer, I personally find it unpleasing when I find that something that I bought gets sold at a lower price later.

  Even though it is a far different example, a person who bought a unit in a condominium would feel terrible if they found out that another unit was being sold at a much lower price. Even though it might not be logical to compare a videogame console or a game software to purchasing an apartment, I wonder why those who supported the product earlier need to pay more if they are buying a product with the same value? As such situations have been repeated over and over, customers have learnt well, and they now psychologically hesitate to buy a title - whose sales figure tops only in the week of release, knowing that it will lower its price a while after launch. I have been thinking that something is wrong with that and have been trying to develop some ways so that we do not face the need to lower the original price by talking often with Shinji Hatano or Shigeru Miyamoto.

  Of course if we come into hardship or if there is a huge change in our situation, we may have to change the price, so I can't say for certain that we'll never do that. But I do feel that our customers can see through the business model of generating demand by gradually lowering prices and is no longer effective. Thus Nintendo has almost never adopted the cheaper editions of software titles lately.

  The exceptions were the ones made during the last days of GameBoy Advance or "Play on Wii Selection" titles for Wii that were originally sold as GameCube games. These may appear as though they were positioned as cheaper editions, but both series were released years after the original launch and were not launched as countermeasures to stop used games that were in circulation. On the contrary, I believe that if we can earn the trust from our consumers that they never lose out whenever they buy Nintendo products, then that is a huge benefit in the long term. Fortunately, we feel that this method has worked well for this round.

Iwata:

  I have never thought that our company is stable and also believe that once we think it is stable, then that is a sign of great danger. Moving forward, the workers who experienced hardship during Nintendo 64 and GameCube period, because those products never became mainstream, will gradually lessen at Nintendo. In other words, the ratio of those who never experienced that hardship will increase internally. In such future, where majority of Nintendo employees will have no awareness of the slight differences that were decisive and critical to the fate between the past and current generation, how the company as a whole can remain vigilant and remember those important details without taking destructive measures will be our challenge. This challenge of ours will become more challenging as a good situation continues.

  Well, no company was ever prosperous forever in the history of business and industry. We'd like to prepare so that, when we face that inevitable challenge, we will be able to overcome it as best as we can.

Iwata:

  First, we Japanese often lump Europe into one big piece, but in fact it is an aggregate of countries composed of completely different values and characteristics, where a common sense or a busy sales season in one country is not so in another.

  And the truth is not as you mentioned - actually I took part in various aspects and I think I have done many things in introducing what should be conveyed as the products' sales point, but it was actually our European people who largely contributed in deciding how we actually market our products there. They fully analyzed the process of how the Japanese gaming market expanded before other regions, voraciously studied how Japanese advertisement were effective or why certain products were widely accepted, and tried to find how it applied to their own markets.

  I think the growth of European market would have surely never been realized without the preceding growth in Japan to expand the gaming population.

  And the large reason of the growth in Europe is, nearly one third of the European market today is the UK, but Nintendo's presence in the UK was close to none as of 2005; no Nintendo title could be found in Top 20 best-sellers, and this phenomenon was only seen in the UK. In those days, even though we did not have the same momentum like today, we still occupied some of the higher ranks in Japan and the U.S. No presence in retail also meant almost no recognition among consumers. It was the combination of some of our most unique products, like DS and "Brain Age" or "Nintendogs", or Wii and "Wii Sports" or "Wii Fit" that was able to create a large demand within the UK, which is the largest European market, and that consequently changed the overall mood in Europe.

  But let me dare say today that there was no magic. It was a change that happened after continuously making small efforts. By reviewing the graphs that I made for today, I was a bit surprised myself to see what we have done with the European market, but I felt it was not a magic, just a pile of small efforts.