Nintendo on getting the best third party games on Switch, embracing indies, mobile business "doing well," and partnerships with other devs/pubs

Forbes sat down with Reggie Fils-Aime to talk about all sorts of things Nintendo. In the snippets below, you can learn about third parties on Switch, Nintendo and indies, the company's mobile efforts, and plans for future partnerships.

On wooing third parties to Switch

Our ultimate goal is for the very best of the third-party content to be on Nintendo Switch and to be on date with the other platforms, absolutely that's our goal. The way we're making that happen is first, the developers need to see that Nintendo Switch is a vibrant platform, and we're delivering on that. The fact that the Nintendo Switch was the best-selling console in U.S. history in its first 12 months really highlights the momentum that we have.

And then thirdly, these developers need to see a vibrant and engaged player base. And we're delivering on that as well. There have been so many independent developers saying that of all of the platforms they've released content for, that their content is selling best on Nintendo Switch. And that's because we support these developers with marketing activity, participation in our own first-party initiatives, Nintendo Directs, our own curation activity that we do, both on the device and off the device with Nintendo dot com. And so that's why we're seeing all of this great content come to Nintendo Switch, and our focus is to continue making sure that we do get the best content available launching on the platform.

On embracing indies

Well, look, for us, we want to focus on the things that we can control. And so, we want to enable strong curation. We've added additional merchandising elements within the Nintendo Switch eShop to make it easier for consumers to find the content they want on the device. The news feature that we have is a great way to highlight new content. We do things from an overall marketing standpoint as I touched on. We've done Nintendo Directs focused purely on independent developer content. So we have a variety of different ways to help our content be noticed and to be purchased by the consumer. I believe if we continue to do that well, then ultimately the developers will have success and they'll have shared their positive stories and that'll drive even more of the top-shelf content appearing on the device. The fact that Tuesday we launched Hollow Knight for the platform, the fact that we're going to be the first home console with Killer Queen Black coming next year, you know these are all examples of our commitment to the indie development community. And certainly we're loving the results.

On cross-platform play

We support it obviously. We think that enabling the developer to achieve their vision of having as many different players competing against each other honors their content and it honors the player, and so that's why we've embraced cross-play. We embraced cross-play with the Wii U platform. So this is nothing new for us. How our competitors approach it is for them to decide, but for us, we believe it's the right thing to do for the developers as well as for the player themselves.

On Nintendo's mobile efforts

Our mobile business is doing quite well, and the way we look at it is certainly, there's a monetization aspect to the mobile business. As you touched on, Fire Emblem Heroes is monetizing exceptionally well. The other piece we look at, though, is the ability of mobile to drive consumers into our dedicated games business after they've had a first taste of a particular franchise in mobile. We saw that be quite effective with Pokémon Go. Our dedicated handheld business two summers ago after the launch of Pokémon Go was extremely strong, and consumers are gravitating toward the device to play those great Pokémon games that were available only for a Nintendo 2DS and 3DS. We believe we'll see that similarly when we launch Fire Emblem: Three Houses next year, with all of the consumers that are experiencing Fire Emblem now and the ability to transition them to a dedicated games device. We think also with Pokémon: Let's Go Pikachu!, Let's Go Eevee!, the transition from the Pokémon players on mobile to playing a Pokémon experience on Nintendo Switch is going to be very powerful.

So the strategy's working. We are continuing to experiment with a variety of different monetization schemes. And we believe that monetization needs to be tied to the gameplay mechanic itself. For Super Mario Run, we believed that the best monetization was one price for the entire content available. For other games, whether it's Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp or Fire Emblem Heroes, we're taking a different strategy. We've announced that Mario Kart Tour is in development and that will launch in our current fiscal year. We haven't announced the specifics of the monetization scheme for that, but rest assured that monetization will be consistent with the gameplay that we offer.

And then lastly, you mentioned Cygames. We're excited about the partnership with Cygames. The game that they're working on, Dragalia Lost, we've announced will be launched first in Japan and the Asia markets. And personally, it's a game that I've had a chance to play and I'm very excited about it. I think it actually is a title that could do well on a global basis. So, mobile is continuing for us. It's an area that we'll continue to launch two to three new apps a year as well as maintain support for the existing mobile games. And it is something that we see being quite effective for us as a business to motivate consumers as well as drive financial results.

On partnerships with other companies

We've had a history of strong collaborations. We collaborated with Activision, for example, on Skylanders and toys-to-life, having some of our intellectual property be included in that game. We've partnered with a number of Japanese developers in the past. So we have a rich history with partnerships both inside our industry as well as outside our industry. In the end, though, it's important that the partner we work with has a strong understanding of our business philosophy, that there's a strong understanding of the intellectual property and how the intellectual property is used. And certainly as we look to relationships, for example, with Universal Studios, with our theme park initiative, or with Illumination with our motion picture initiative for Super Mario, you know these are things that we are always looking at. But we want to make sure we're working with the best partners.