Satoru Shibata Answers His First Question At Nintendo’s Q&A For Investors

During Nintendo’s Q&A session for investors last week, ex-Nintendo of Europe boss Satoru Shibata answered a question for the very first time at the Q&A session.

Shibata, who has been promoted to Nintendo Senior Executive Officer, answered an investor’s question on sales momentum. Shibata believes Nintendo has completely overcome various challenges, like reaching out to different demographics for games such as Super Mario Party and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

See his response below:

Q13. I’d like to hear about the future of your big hit titles released during October to December last year. The initial response was extremely strong, but will that be met with a drop in sales momentum? Or will the strength of that initial momentum on release help download sales and purchases based on word-of-mouth to grow, resulting in a net positive effect on future sales?

Satoru Shibata (Director, Senior Executive Officer):

We feel very fortunate that the initial sales pace for Super Mario Party, Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu!/Pokémon: Let’s Go, Eevee!,and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has been so strong. However, that doesn’t exactly mean we’re satisfied. Before their release, we challenged ourselves to see how we could expand our consumer base with each of these titles. For Super Mario Party, the question was “How could we reach people other than children and parents?” With Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu!/Pokémon: Let’s Go, Eevee!, we asked “How could we reach people who had played Pokémon GO, for example, but never played Nintendo Switch?” With Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, we asked “How could we reach not only fans of the Super SmashBros. series, but also those who had never played it before?” If you look at the demographics of the consumers who purchased each of these titles, Iʼm not convinced weʼve completely overcome these challenges yet.

So our aims are to keep working on them this year, to expand sales of these titles to new consumer demographics, and to keep selling these games for a long time, which is one of our strengths.