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Nintendo won't devalue their IPs by flooding the market with licensed merchandise

by rawmeatcowboy
02 July 2015
GN Version 5.0

Coming from Nintendo's investor meeting with Iwata...

Iwata: ...we are very grateful that you love Nintendo characters and games, and have the desire to own related products. On the other hand, we have to be wary of whether more Nintendo-licensed products will make a better situation. In the short term it may receive much attention, income such as licensing fees may increase and we might be able to grant some people’s wishes, but along with that we also have to consider correct quality control (maintaining and managing character value). Most products in the character industry are consumption-based in that they continuously repeat the process of birth and death. Only a handful of characters can last for one, two or three decades. Nintendo’s IP strategy is based on a long-term perspective where we continue to enhance our characters, worlds and settings for years. We have already announced that we would more actively utilize our IP, but not in the way that we increase the number of licensing partners as much as possible; instead we will proactively try anything that will enhance the value of our IP. We believe that it is not worth attempting initiatives that produce short-term profits at the expense of long-term detrimental effects on our IP. You might be unsatisfied with our pace of IP utilization, but we ask for your understanding.

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