Nintendo Investor Meeting

Satoru Iwata shared the above chart in an investor meeting, also mentioning that:

…at the end of last year which reported that the total unit sales of the Nintendo 3DS reached four million faster than the Nintendo DS or the Wii. However, at that time, this pace was not the fastest in Japan’s video game history, since it was slower than that of the Game Boy Advance. But, the Nintendo 3DS did not lose its momentum even after the new year, and two weeks ago it broke the record of the fastest sales pace.

And I’m assuming we can stop saying the 3DS is doomed. It seems to be doing quite well.

Satoru Iwata has shared the following announcement in a recent investor meeting:

Although there is no logo here, we are planning to release a totally new side-scrolling action Super Mario in 2D as a key title for the Nintendo 3DS in the next fiscal year.

This means it will launch on the 3DS between the end of March 2012 and the end of March 2013.

In an effort to increase the awareness of games that may otherwise remain out of the spotlight, Nintendo is considering a feature that would automatically send game demos to your Nintendo 3DS. The idea is that you’d opt-in to this service and without further interaction you would receive the content.

Here’s how Satoru Iwata explains it:

When Nintendo would like to ask users to try a specific new game, we should deliver it to their Nintendo 3DS, and possibly Wii U, with their prior consent and recommend that they just try it and, if they like it, they can pay for it. In this way, we need to introduce users to unknown products.

…and then explaining why this would exist:

Consumers are likely to be convinced to pay about 5,000 yen for a well-established franchise product, but not all the people are willing to pay a certain amount of money for an innovative but unknown product. Now is the time to prepare for these situations.

That sounds good to me. Granted, I’d be happy with demos in general. The automatic feature just makes it that little bit extra convenient though.

In a recent Nintendo investor meeting Satoru Iwata was asked about using a Nintendo 3DS as a controller for the Wii U. He addressed the technical limitations first, saying that:

While the Nintendo 3DS is communicating with the Wii or the Wii U, the Wii or the Wii U will not be able to access the Internet, and this technical restriction will remain unless we add some special hardware.

He’s also wary of the perception that Nintendo would be forcing people to buy a Nintendo 3DS and the Wii U to get access to certain experiences. Connectivity between the 3DS and the Wii U is still on its way. But don’t expect to see the 3DS as a different way to control your games.

In a recent investor meeting Satoru Iwata has said:

Even Mr. Miyamoto has been asking, “Does anyone have a plan for ‘StreetPass Quest 2′?” for several months, and several departments are currently considering such a possibility.

Assumably it’d be another freebie, but even a low-priced eShop title would do me. The trick is to just somehow get the people in my neighbourhood to own a Nintendo 3DS so I can actually play through the game…