Nintendo Not Done With E3 Press Conferences
Nintendo’s surprising choice to go with a video presentation rather than the full blown, now traditional, pre-E3 press conference is not something we should expect to happen every year, according to an interview Nintendo of America head-honcho Reggie Fils-Aime gave to Polygon.
“Next year and what we do at E3 next year is going to be an ongoing conversation, based on what the right thing to do is for the content we have,” he said. “What we are not saying as a result of this year is that the Nintendo press conference is dead.”
Here at GodisaGeek towers we have become big fans of Nintendo’s regular Nintendo Direct offerings, a regular look at what we can expect from the big N was always going to be welcome. As for the decision to go with the Direct’ formula for E3, it worked out pretty well for Nintendo, as they were able to show all the games they wanted too;
“This year, we have a parade of content that once you get your hands on it, you say to yourself I gotta get this game and I mean think about it,” Fils-Aime continued, “We have all of these playable games on our floor and most of them are coming out this holiday season, three are coming in 2014.”
“Nintendo Direct is very powerful for us and we are going to continue to utilize Nintendo Direct to drive engagement with our user,” he said. “I would say that certainly the first viewership is by our fans, by people who know the brand and know the products, there is tremendous secondary viewership that happens and this is something that is a bit different from lets say Japan, in our market the viewership builds over time, literally after three weeks or four weeks after a Nintendo direct the viewership is still climbing steadily.”
On Nintendo’s relationship with EA, Reggie decides to look inwards, stating that Nintendo need to promote the Wii U more, shift more consoles, and to do this, release more first party games;
“We talk to EA all the time, we talk to all of our publishing partners all the time,” he said. “In the end this is a simple business. First party needs to drive a large diverse install base for publisher to create content to take advantage of that install base. That is what we are looking to do, you know for any publisher what they want to say to themselves is that we have game X and we are confident that we can sell game X not only to pay off the investment but to make a profit on that game.”
