Reggie Son-Loved On Nintendo Switch Games And Its Main 'Smash'

President and Chief Operating Officer Reggie Fils-Aimé of Nintendo of America sat at the end of a white table in a hotel room in downtown Manhattan. At the other end of the table, a row of packaged Nintendo games and consoles, arranged as if sitting in front of a window, before the holidays.

The window behind the fortunetelling sign was on a cold, rainy November morning, and Fils-Aimé was talking about Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, coming out for the Nintendo Switch on December 7th.

I asked him who he was playing with.

"I'm focused on playing Ridley," said Fils-Aimé, referring to one of the all-new characters smash. "My strategy is simple, it's a well-known fact that I'm not a very good person. Super Smash Bros. player, and so I'm focusing on the fact that I'm going to continue practicing as Ridley, so at 12:01 am on the morning of the 7th, I can be Ridley's best player for a very short time. That's my strategy. "

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is one of the pillars of the 2018 holiday season with Nintendo. Pokémon: Let's go, Pikachu! and Evee!, launch on November 16th. Son-Aimé was eager to discuss all that Nintendo has to offer for the holidays, including a Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Nintendo Switch bundle for Black Friday, Diablo III and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate packages, and a Super Mario Maker Nintendo 2DS bundle.

Earlier this year, Nintendo set quite high sales targets for this year: 20 million units sold by March 31, 2019. By October, the company had sold only 5 million units. next few months.

Despite this, Fils-Aimé said that Nintendo did not give in to this estimate.

"Our confidence is great," he said. "The months of October, November, and December are a huge selling season for Nintendo, and over 60% of our revenue here in America is a very big selling time."

Son-Aimé mentioned that Super Mario Party started the season with a fantastic start, exceeding expectations "quite significantly". The company has also experienced strong reactions to its bundles, mentioned above, including Super Smash Bros. Ultimate set up for sale on November 9th which is actually exhausted.

"We are seeing a very good response from consumers to our games and special offers, and with Pokémon and Smash Bros. coming soon, we think we are very well placed for the holidays, "said Fils-Aimé.

It is important for companies to plan their outings for these great sales seasons, and Nintendo is very deliberate.

"We have expectations about the moment[[[[Metroid Prime 4]will be released "

"It's something that Mr. [Shinya] Takahashi thinks deeply as responsible for all our internal development, "said Fils-Aimé. We are certainly thinking of launching key games during the key selling seasons. So, it was well thought to have, for example, Zelda key launch title when the switch first appears. It was well thought to have Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Splatoon 2 maintain momentum in this early launch window … It was thought to have a game like Super Mario Party to launch our October sales season. It was well thought to have Pokémon and Smash Bros. as key anchors. "

So for a highly anticipated game like Metroid Prime 4, who was teased at E3 in 2017, does Nintendo have any idea of ​​when it will come out? Of course that's what they do.

"Internally, we have expectations as to when[[[[Metroid Prime 4]Son-Aime announced: "We have not announced it, but the game is well under development."

Nintendo thinks deeply about its messages when announcing games. Normally, Nintendo likes to announce its games shortly after their availability, explained Fils-Aimé.

"What we like to do is usually six months to maybe a year, but we think it's important to point out that a game is coming," he said. "We did it years ago and years ago with Zelda. At the time of the Wii U, we were telling a new Zelda experience … It really depends on the game, the kind of development we are experiencing and the way we think the consumer will react. to the particular message. "

Even with all this planning and minutiae in game releases, things sometimes do not always align perfectly – release dates are not necessarily fixed years in advance.

"We think deeply about the sequence of our games, but having said that, Nintendo is well aware that if a game is not ready, we will continue development to make it as strong as possible when the game starts." said Fils-Aimé. "During my tenure at Nintendo, we have repeatedly delayed the development of key games, and in the end, it's still worth it, because we focus on quality."

"Our company is really committed to this work / life balance"

This mentality of agreement to postpone the release dates has been taken into account by the recent discussions in the video game industry on the "tightening" and exploitation of work, which Nintendo agrees to avoid, according to Fils -Love.

"Our society is really committed to this work / life balance," he said. Yes, I can speak from Nintendo of America's point of view, we do not participate in the development of our content – we are a sales, marketing and distribution company – but our goal is that we will balance the workload, we will of course deliver our results, but we do so in a way that really respects the employee. "

The subject of the conversation has returned to specific video games. Less than two years after the switch's debut, many of Nintendo's most iconic franchises have already had an entry on the console or have one, including Smash, Metroid, Animal Crossing and even Luigi's Mansion .

I asked Son-Aimé if the goal of Nintendo was to make sure that all these different franchises have a moment in the sun on each console.

He said yes, but it is not enough to publish a game on a console to check the name of each franchise on a list.

"We are always trying to create experiences that the consumer has not even considered"

"Our goal with each system is to launch an iconic execution within a particular franchise, whether it's a Super Mario platform experience or a experience of Smash Bros. We want this performance to be truly iconic, "said Fils-Aimé. "It takes time, and it's something that's very important to us." Our company does not use annualized software, and when we create a Zelda game, when we create a Smash Bros. game or game A Pokémon experience presents itself on the platform, it must be exceptionally appealing because we plan to sell it for a very long time. "

Of course, Nintendo is not limited to its most popular franchises. They always create new experiences.

"We are always striving to create new content," said Fils-Aimé. "We want to create the next Splatoon, we want to create the next Arms, we want to create the next Lab. We are always trying to create experiences that the consumer has not even considered. "

This is just one of the three main pillars of Nintendo: its gaming business. One of its other pillars, the most recent, the mobile, arouses equally nuanced attention.

"What we will not do is simply take an existing console experience and put it on mobile," said Fils-Aimé. "We want to do something new. Super Mario Run is something new and different in the Super Mario experience. Animal crossing: pocket camp is something different – always Animal Crossing – but a different type of experience. That's the way we think about it. "

Earlier this year, Nintendo announced the arrival of a new mobile Mario Kart game, which Fils-Aimé assured would have the Mario Kart DNA but which would be different and optimized for a mobile experience.

Nintendo also sees mobile as a place to introduce new intellectual property, as we saw with the month of September. Lost Dragalia realized in partnership with Cygames.

Other partnerships between Nintendo and other developers have recently emerged, as evidenced by the collaboration between Ubisoft and Nintendo on Mario + Rabbids: Battle Kingdom and the inclusion of Star Fox and his friends in Starlink: Battle for Atlas.

"For us, what we think is this: does the company we work with share the same values ​​as we do, does it have the same kind of mentality with respect to this content? Does it showcase in Ultimately, will it be a great experience for the consumer? "Son-Aimé said. "These are the things we think about when we enter into this type of conversation."

"This is going to be a key business pillar for us"

In addition to the two pillars of Nintendo's game, there is the third pillar: the growth and expansion of Nintendo's intellectual property.

"This is reflected in our relationship with Universal Studios in the parks creation experiences," said Fils-Aimé. "This is evident in our relationship with Illumination, which creates a Super Mario movie in partnership with Nintendo, so it will be a key commercial pillar for us, how we will use our IP effectively, so we look to the future. these are things that are important to us. "

I've asked questions about Nintendo's film and series projects on streaming sites such as Netflix and Hulu, but it's hard to get Fils-Aimé to give up any information that Nintendo has Has not yet expressly announced.

"We will explore different possibilities and when they are ready we will announce them," he said.