IR Information

Financial Results Briefing
for Fiscal Year Ended March 2011
Apr. 26, 2011 Presentation by Satoru Iwata, President
BACK | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 | NEXT

As for Wii, the number of Wii titles which had shipped more than a million units since their launches, reached 30 for Nintendo and The Pokémon Company, and 73 for third-party developers.

And now, I'd like to introduce some of the titles.


First, I would like to talk about this year's No.1 hit title in the U.S. and Europe, "Pokémon Black" & "Pokémon White" for Nintendo DS. This title was launched in Japan in September last year and has become the fastest selling software in Japanese video game history to reach five million units in sales and even extended its sales record further.
This software was launched this year on March 6 in the U.S., and on March 4 in Europe.

Please see the sales transition of this software, which I have compared to former "Pokémon" titles.


First, the sales transitions in the U.S. The red line shows the sales transition of "Pokémon Black" & "Pokémon White." The blue line stands for the sales transition of "Pokémon Diamond" & "Pokémon Pearl," and the green line stands for "Pokémon HeartGold" & "Pokémon SoulSilver."
For the latest title "Pokémon Black" & "Pokémon White," the initial sales figure was large, but even after that, the sales are still growing smoothly.


Next, I would like to show you the sales transitions in Europe. Also in Europe, the sales transition of "Pokémon Black" & "Pokémon White" is selling at a pace exceeding that of "Pokémon Diamond" & "Pokémon Pearl" or "Pokémon HeartGold" & "Pokémon SoulSilver."
Nintendo DS became popular among a wide range of consumers both in the U.S. and Europe, and "Pokémon" has the potential to be sold not only at the time of its launch but continuously, so we would like to take full advantage of this software's sales potential.


Also, I mentioned earlier that "Art Academy" is being well sold in Europe even after the turn of the year, and the shipment figure has grown to as many as 1.9 million units globally.


As you can see, the sales in Europe, shown in green, have been steadily growing even after the turn of the year, and I assume this title has already established itself as an evergreen title for Nintendo DS. I suppose there are many consumers who are interested in art in Europe, and I feel that this title has even more sales potential.


As for the software for Wii, I believe I should introduce this software first.
I introduced this software at the Financial Results Briefing last May, as software which was selling in an interesting way. However, I did not imagine that it would start such a movement.


This data was compiled by extracting the number of monthly sales from the U.S. NPD data. "JUST DANCE 2" has sold over 4.5 million units in the U.S. already, and it is still the No.1 selling software this year in the U.S. Judging from the momentum, I believe this title has the potential to sell more. Most Wii software titles that had this type of sales pattern were first-party titles, but this "JUST DANCE" series became a smash hit, which is an example of success for the third parties.


This graph shows the sales transitions in Europe. The trend is almost the same as in the U.S. For Europe, the degree to which dancing games are received differs in each country, but I assume that the sales potential is growing even in the countries in which the sales figure of this software is not growing steadily because it has started a new movement in the larger markets such as the U.K. or France.
While "JUST DANCE" grew into a smash-hit series, other dancing games also started to sell well.


Some major examples are "MICHAEL JACKSON: THE EXPERIENCE" from Ubisoft, the publisher of the "JUST DANCE" series, and "ZUMBA Fitness" from Majesco Entertainment. Zumba might be unfamiliar to Japanese people, but it is a type of dance fitness exercise created by integrating Latin music and dance.


BACK | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 | NEXT


Page Top