Nintendo President Kimishima Reiterates Plans For 2016
Today Nintendo of Japan’s president, Mr. Kimishima, outlined Nintendo’s big tent pole focuses for 2016 in the Japanese newspaper, Mainichi Shimbun. These have all been talked about before, but any time he speaks, we might just get a little nugget of information that we didn’t have before. Although I viewed the article via Chrome’s translation function, we all know that’s not the most ideal way to report news as it can often get words and intentions completely wrong. Luckily, Dr. Serkan Toto has done some of his own translating and come up with the following pieces of information:
- Kimishima says Nintendo wants to surprise fans with new ideas – not build on old ones. Nintendo will in 2016 release “details” on the NX.
- Kimishima claims the expansion to smartphones and theme parks, but also to movies and TV anime (via character licensing) is progressing.
- He says it’s vital for Nintendo to experiment with new business models. He confirms the first smartphone app will be rolled out in March.
- Kimishima promises smartphone apps with Nintendo’s famous characters in 2016. He wants to bring the company’s financials to a new level. The plan is to bring profits to 100 billion yen ($855 million) in “several years”, which would be 4 times the amount of last year’s profit.
If you recall, this isn’t the first time Kimishima has said the NX will be based on new ideas. He was quoted last month by Time as saying,
“As far as NX goes, I’ve said it’s different and obviously a new experience. If you look back to the beginning of our conversation today, we talked about the transition from Wii hardware to the Wii U hardware and how difficult it is to explain to the consumer base what is different and new about the new hardware. It’s difficult to convince them to switch from their current platform to the next platform. That being said, I can assure you we’re not building the next version of Wii or Wii U. It’s something unique and different. It’s something where we have to move away from those platforms in order to make it something that will appeal to our consumer base.”
Once again it’s important to continue to look at the wording used whenever Nintendo talks about the NX. Not once in any interview or statement has Nintendo stated that the NX will be released in 2016. They consistently have said they will reveal details about NX in 2016. Somehow that has morphed into Nintendo is releasing the system this year. Now, that of course could happen and may be the case, but I don’t want people getting their hopes up that a new system is on the way this year when Nintendo has never stated that to be the case.
I do like that Nintendo is trying to diversify and reach out into different markets. It will be interesting to see what kind of movies and anime end up coming out with Nintendo IP.
The good news is we can’t be too far away from more announcements. In just a few weeks is another financial statement release, which sometimes has little pieces of new information. Then, in just a couple months we should see Nintendo’s new account system rollout worldwide as well as its first mobile game. After that, it’s just another three months to E3 in June, where by all accounts we should know all about the NX. We’ll keep you updated as all of these events approach.
Craig has been covering the video game industry since 1995. His work has been published across a wide spectrum of media sites. He’s currently the Editor-In-Chief of Nintendo Times and contributes to Gaming Age.
