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Can you give us a timeframe for the Nintendo 3DS launch? |
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Satoru Iwata (President): What I can say today about the timing is the same as when we made the announcement back in March that we will launch Nintendo 3DS in our major markets around the world this fiscal year, which means by the end of March of next year. In terms of a specific date or specific price point,please wait until an announcement is made in the near future. |
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Nintendo 3DS has very advanced graphics and you have several games or content like Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil that belong to a different market than the handheld platforms from Nintendo has historically addressed. If the product is still relevant to the core audience who like to play Pokémon, Mario Kart and Zelda, is there some concern that this product may be too advanced, or perhaps too expensive for your core audience of handheld players? |
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Iwata: Anytime we come up with ideas for a new piece of Nintendo hardware, our objective is to find ways to entertain as broad of an audience as possible, and when we say "broad," that means regardless of age or gender or gaming skills. Yet, certain types of games have been difficult to be created with the graphic and other capabilities of the existing Nintendo DS. When we took the new Nintendo 3DS hardware and showed it to (third-party) publishers and developers, their feeling was that much of their content was something they could realize on the Nintendo 3DS system, and that’s why we were able to announce the lineup that we did yesterday. I surmise that the question that you’re asking is that perhaps the hardware specifications of Nintendo 3DS seem to be too sophisticated or too expensive and Nintendo 3DS may make it difficult for us to appeal to the existing audience who has been supporting us. Of course, in terms of our own internal software development, we will be devoting much of our resources to support Nintendo 3DS. From our historical perspective, since we thought it is obvious that first-party software lineup needs to support the new platform to expand its installed base, we did not emphasize that in our presentation yesterday. We will of course introduce quality first-party software. In this regard, our internal teams, which have created series titles supported by Nintendo fans, are now beginning their work on development, very excited about the various types of things that they’re going to be able to achieve. Our goal is to have Nintendo 3DS be a platform that appeals to an even broader audience than Nintendo DS and we’ll continue to focus our efforts into achieving that as we go forward. |
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Today, your portable platform future seems secure, and Wii still has its momentum. Under these circumstances, would you consider doing some share buybacks or other things in terms of shareholder returns? |
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Iwata: We do look at share buybacks as a potential option from a management perspective. However it’s something on which we would take action only after we determined that the need has arisen. Unfortunately, it’s not something we can discuss specifics in a meeting like this where the information cannot be shared fairly to the public. We’re always thinking about shareholder returns. |
