Reggie Fils-Aime
President and Chief Operating Officer of Nintendo of America.
I like to think of it like buying a car. Admit it. Your left brain looks at a vehicle in terms of the numbers. What's the horsepower? The towing capacity? The 0-60? That's our competitor's approach. But your right brain is different. There's only one question out there: sitting behind the wheel, where will this baby take me? In other words, do you want to go just a little bit faster, down the same streets you've always driven, or down a new road, to places you've never seen before? That's the difference with Nintendo DS.
Prepare to let your right brain run wild.
Don't make me do it. I'll take your name.
To date, global sellthrough for Nintendo DS stands at over 5 million, or more than twice the level for the PSP. Now, I know what some of you are thinking: "Well, the PSP hasn't arrived in Europe yet." So we got there when we said we would, and they didn't. You know what? That's Sony's issue, not my problem.
We're working to overcome the overly macho nature of the current online console game world, where a handful of the high testosterone crowd fight for supremacy, while the mass of casual game players stay away.
DS not only changes Nintendo, it changes our industry.
If competitors don't like our two to one advantage, dominating market share with both SP and DS, well, I've got bad news. Because we just made it two and a half to one.
The graveyard of any industry is filled with the headstones of companies who decided to keep doing things the same old way. Playing only on the margin, making things just a little bit better. That strategy works....for a while, but ultimately it's fatal. Over the years our industry has come to accept progress simply by what’s on the screen.
Nintendo DS is not standing still. As a tenth serious competitor decides to make a run at Game Boy, DS raises the bar on portable gaming, before they even get started.
The government is already involved from an entertainment standpoint. I mean, they regulate a large part of our entertainment. What we're trying to do as an industry is be proactive and drive it much more positively, much more effectively, than the government can, and that's what the ESA is all about[....]We think we're doing a pretty effective job, and certainly from an Nintendo perspective, we think the ESA is the way to go.
I'd much rather have the consumer buy a Wii, some accessories, and a ton of games, vs. buying any of my competitor's products.
Matt said Zelda won't be epic without voices. I remember the last time Matt made a critically acclaimed game. It was called the Mailbag.
If you're ready to move beyond pure numbers, to a place where your right brain can envision the best in innovation and the best in gameplay improvement, well, you've come to the right place.
Being the puppet master, it's like running Nintendo of America.
That's Sony's issue, not my problem.
Do you know anyone who's never watched TV, never seen a movie, never read a book? Of course not. So let me ask you one more question. Do you know someone, maybe even in your own family, who's never played a video game? I bet you do. How can this be? If we want to consider ourselves a true mass medium, if we want to grow as an industry, this has to change.