Reggie on online multiplayer, approaching mobile, staying focused on games

A portion of a WashingtonPost interview with Reggie Fils-Aime...

WP: Speaking of connectivity, across the floor there’s a greater focus on online multiplayer. Nintendo has always been a bastion for couch co-op, but how are you balancing those two demands?

RFA: A couple facts and figures — and all of these are focused on the Americas business, that I lead. Both the Wii U and the Nintendo 3DS are highly connected devices, meaning that north of 90 percent of the devices out there are connected to the Internet. With that online connectivity, it really enables online gameplay to happen. That’s why Mario Kart 7 online is so fabulous. that’s why Smash Bros. both on Wii U and 3DS are so fabulous in a connected environment.

So you’re absolutely right, I think, we continue, I believe, to lead the world in couch connected gaming, but we’re continuing to drive our business forward from an online perspective as well, and we’re doing effectively with that part of our business.

WP: So is that something you’ll continue to build into your games moving forward?

RFA: Absolutely. The one interesting element though is that Nintendo views the connected experience game by game. Meaning let’s take Yoshi’s Woolly World. We have two-player mode in that game. Because it is such a great couch coop game, we made the decision that it won’t have online gameplay.

But conversely you look at a game like Mario Maker, the ability to upload your levels to the Internet, the ability for people to follow you and know when you’ve launched a new level because they value your creativity, all of that is right for that particular game. So we view it on a game by game basis, what makes the most sense, what type of connectivity do we enable. But make no mistake, we make sure that every nintendo game has an element of social gameplay. Because we believe that’s very important.

WP: You’ve announced that you’ll be partnering to make mobile games, but you obviously also a have a huge handheld market. Those are similar markets, but not the same market. How do you think about the mobile space?

RFA: The way we think about this broad handheld gaming space is first, gamers love to game. They’ll game on home console, they’ll game on a dedicated handheld device, they’ll game on mobile, they’ll game on tablets. They love to game. And so it’s not an either or proposition, it’s all about how do we get the gamer to spend more time playing our content.

Second, there’s a variety of different types of gameplay experiences that you can have. You can have the analogy to a snack, you can have the analogy to a full meal. And what we find is that when it comes to having the full meal, it really is best delivered through a dedicated handheld system. You’ve got the processing power, the full range of inputs and buttons. In our case you’ve got unique features like 3D visuals, the connective experiences around street passing. So for those big robust experiences, a dedicated system makes sense. For things that are a little bit more like a snack, a little bit lighter, a little bit less time consuming, that’s where you’re seeing a lot of smart device gaming. Whether it’s phone or tablet.

And there is a third piece. We’ve said publicly that we believe, done smartly, we can introduce our IP to new consumers through a smart device game. As they see what might be fun about Mario [on a smart device], they’ll then go to the full meal and have a true Mario experience on our dedicated handheld or our dedicated home console.

That’s our logic. It’s all about satisfying a broad range of gamers, providing them a broad range of gaming experiences and in the end being able to monetize all of those experiences whether it’s on smart devices or on our dedicated gaming businesses.

WP: Finally, I know you guys aren’t talking about NX [Nintendo’s mysterious upcoming console]. But looking ahead at the next year of Nintendo, what are things we should really be excited about?

RFA: The first thing we should be really excited about are all the great games we’re launching, for Nintendo, we focus on games that are launching over the next 6-9 months, and we’ve got a ton of great content coming. The second thing that people should be excited about are all of the other ongoing innovations that we’re working on that we’re not talking about here today, that’s NX, that’s smart device gaming, that’s our IP partnerships. All of that is there in the future as well.

The key thing for Nintendo is that this is all we do. No operating systems, no TVs, it’s all about making great games, having consumers spend more and more time with our form of entertainment, and putting smiles on people’s faces. And we’ll be doing that in a variety of different ways now and into the future.