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Nintendo on 4K being a limited audience, Switch's online subscription service, eSports, and fan-feedback

by rawmeatcowboy
25 June 2017
GN Version 5.0

Coming from a Verge interview with Reggie Fils-Aime...

On the limited audience of 4K

The Nintendo mission is to reach as many consumers as possible and to have them engage and have fun with our [intellectual property]. That’s what we try and do. So inherently, we go for a more mainstream audience. Inherently, we want our products to be affordable. We want our products to be easy to pick up and experience, low learning curve. We want our IP to shine as we deliver these experiences.

That’s the way we approach it. And so, what that means is, a sweet spot of $300 for the Nintendo Switch, a platform that has Mario and Zelda and Splatoon. Going against a more limited consumer pool, a higher price point, requiring investments in other ways — 4K TVs, what have you — that is a strategy that for us, candidly, is a bit too limited.

On approaching eSports differently

We’ve been fortunate with Smash Bros. to have a franchise that has been very active in this space. What we’ve been doing is educating our developers and candidly creating some expertise ourselves in how to engage with the community. Now we have a fantastic relationship with the Smash Bros. community; I would say that was not true fix, six, seven years ago. We think that Arms can support a very vibrant community.

We were in e-sports back in 1995 with the very first Nintendo World Championships. We’ve been in this space. I think what Nintendo is doing, as we always do, is our unique view on this, and finding ways to make it a bit more mainstream and a bit more massive, maybe than others have done. We’re going to do it differently.

On Nintendo's approach to an online subscription service

The reason we’ve delayed the full paid subscription, is we want to make sure that as we get all of our learnings, and we build all of the elements, that we launch something that is robust for the consumer. And as they consider a $20 price point, they say ‘This is a no-brainer. This is something that I absolutely need to participate in given the full range of features that it provides.’

That’s why we’re delaying it, and it really is consistent with the overall Nintendo development philosophy. We want, when we launch it, for it to be great for the consumer. And not to be something that isn’t fully-featured and fully-capable. That’s why we delayed Breath of the Wild — and look at what we were able to finally launch.

On fan-feedback

We certainly look at what our community is saying. But arguably, if all we did was listen to our community, we would be creating content against a handful of [intellectual property] with a handful of feature sets, because that’s typically what the consumer focuses in on. Things that they know, things that they’ve seen before.

[Link]