Nintendo may have a tough winter this year

On October 29, Nintendo's new president, Tatsumi Kimishima, hosted a Nintendo business policy briefing, at which Nintendo's first mobile game (app) "Miitomo" was released. This is a social mobile software for friends. In "Miitomo", players can create Mii characters and communicate with other players' Miis without knowing it. This kind of gameplay can encourage those who are "a little nervous about interpersonal communication and sharing life" to embrace life.

"Miitomo" is mainly a product designed to explore the My Nintendo platform and is expected to be launched on the smartphone platform in March 2016.

Imaginary cardiotonic mobile game

This mobile game was obviously a little different from everyone's expectations. In addition, Nintendo said that it would first "fully deal with the year-end business war". The development of the mobile game was temporarily suspended, and the launch originally scheduled for 2015 was postponed to 2016. As soon as the news came out, Nintendo's stock price fell. During the briefing, it plummeted 7.5% in less than an hour. In the following 5 days, Nintendo's stock price plummeted from 24,880 yen per share to 19,415 yen per share. The total stock price also fell from 3.4 trillion yen to 2.75 trillion yen. In less than a week, 650 billion yen (5 billion US dollars) evaporated, an average of more than 100 billion a day.

According to the company's financial report, Nintendo's operating profit for the first half of the fiscal year ending September 30 was 8.98 billion yen, the company's first operating profit in five years, but this performance was still far below analysts' expectations of 14.4 billion yen.

One can't help but recall that on March 17, Nintendo and DeNA held a joint press conference to announce that they would jointly develop mobile platform games. The next day, Nintendo's stock price rose sharply, with the highest increase reaching 29%. It's true that the rise and fall are also due to mobile games.

Although Miitomo is clearly a prelude, it does not mean that there will be no surprises in the following Nintendo mobile games, but it at least reflects one thing, that is, Nintendo is still cautious, slow and conservative in the face of mobile platforms. Even if strong IPs such as Mario and Zelda enter the market in the future, I am afraid that most of them will be different from what we think. This century-old store has always focused on innovation in its own game field, but it falters when facing new technologies and the new era of the Internet.

New President Transition

The position of Nintendo's president has been vacant since the former president Satoru Iwata passed away on July 11, 2015. On September 14, Human Resources Minister Tatsumi Kimishima will be promoted to the position of president on September 16. Not only the players, but even people in the industry are somewhat unfamiliar with the new president.

Kimishima, who had never been involved in the field of game development, joined the Pokémon Company as chairman in December 2000, and joined Nintendo of America as a director in 2002. He has held various positions in Nintendo's senior management since then, and became the head of the Human Resources Department in June 2014. After becoming a director of the American branch, Kimishima made great contributions to the popularity of Pokémon and Wii in the United States. Because he has been in charge of North American affairs for a long time, he is a person who is more Westernized in Nintendo, a typical Japanese company, and is more familiar with overseas markets and finance. Perhaps Nintendo hopes to lead the entire company to face the world through this person with a broader vision and change Nintendo's traditionally conservative policy in the international market.

Although he was appointed in a time of crisis, President Kimijima gives people the feeling of being a temporary leader during a transition period. His main responsibility is to inherit the basic policies and strategies of President Iwata and train more successors for the company.

WiiU's Struggle and 3DS's Survival

On November 13, the Nintendo Direct, which had been suspended for half a year, was finally held again. The friendly smile and Japanese English of Cong Ge were gone, and the young publicity department brother Morimoto took over the host responsibility. This Direct mainly announced the information of WiiU games and 3DS games from the end of this year to the beginning of next year. After the Direct, Nintendo's stock price, which had been falling for half a month, finally recovered.

Nintendo was absent from the E3 show in June, and there were no blockbuster games to support the event, so players could hardly find much to be excited about. In the following months, rivals Microsoft and Sony were busy with various overseas brands, price-cut brands, and blockbuster brands, while Nintendo continued to be a cold audience. I wonder if it can warm up during the holiday season this winter with various postponed new games.

However, WiiU has no chance of turning around in the console market, and it relies on first-party games to support it. The sales of 3DS have already passed the peak. The main purpose of the newly launched new 3DS is to extend the life of the 3DS handheld, at least to avoid hardware gaps before the next generation of handhelds is released. As for the software lineup, Nintendo's signature games have basically been released, including 3D Mario, 2D Mario, Mario Kart 7, Super Smash Bros., Animal Crossing, Pokémon (two games), Zelda (three games), Fire Emblem, etc. There is also a "Monster Hunter X" in November. It is difficult to see monster-level software that can boost hardware sales in 2016.

It is very likely that Nintendo will officially announce the previously secretive NX plan at the 2016 E3 Expo, and it will appear at the latest during the 2016 Christmas shopping season. So the top priority now is to survive the cold winter.

Or are big companies no longer giants?

In the first half of 2015, among global companies whose main business is gaming, Nintendo's total market value exceeded US$24 billion, a four-year high, with annual revenue of US$393 million, ranking fourth. Tencent Games ranked second, with a market value of more than US$150 billion, while Nintendo's market value is only 1/8 of it.

In the Internet and mobile Internet era, not only are games being redefined rapidly, but also player habits are being rapidly overturned. Game companies are also undergoing tremendous changes. Whenever we mention giants, we always have to talk about capital, overseas expansion, and international markets. Nintendo is indeed first-class in game production and game innovation, just as being able to draw animations cannot make Walt Disney a success. Only focusing on the narrow local market and the basic improvement of a single platform, in this era (and perhaps in the future), it is no longer possible to become a major game company.

Square Enix President Yosuke Matsuda once said that if we want to become an influential global company, we must take a global perspective in everything from making decisions to designing games. If Nintendo can adopt a more open attitude and a more international perspective, it may be able to see more of its own shortcomings. In fact, the move to mobile platforms is already an improvement. In the future, cross-platform success will definitely be an important part of a game company's success. It's too late, but fortunately Nintendo has finally started to do it.

What about trying to promote a more aggressive sales strategy in overseas markets? I'm afraid that most players would welcome new games released simultaneously around the world and more localized software lineups. China, a large market that has been "isolated" by Nintendo for a long time, should not be ignored anymore, right? The joint letter submitted by Pokémon players hoping that the Pokémon game will be supported in Chinese language, such an obvious "long-pending" request, should it be considered?

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.