[BIZ] Nintendo: risultati Q3/FY2013, unificazione R&D home/portatili

[Turrican3]

The challenge for Nintendo 3DS exists in the overseas market, not the Japanese market. We need to think about the method and its possibility of making what we have done in Japan happen there.
[...]
To export the momentum to the overseas markets, we plan to actively release our key titles for Nintendo 3DS which could potentially lead the markets this year.
[...]
We [...] plan to more actively support the Japanese software developers in distributing their key titles overseas this year.
Among those third-party titles both developed and published in Japan, there have been some games which Nintendo published in Europe, including the Professor Layton series. We will increase the number of such games for the U.S. market as well as in Europe. We are also willing to flexibly assist third-party developers in distributing their valuable games overseas.

With Wii U, we have taken a rather resolute stance in pricing it below its manufacturing cost, so we are not planning to perform a markdown. I would like to make this point absolutely clear.
[...]
We will have few titles to be released early this year, but our software lineup will be gradually made stronger from spring to summer. To give sales momentum to the hardware, from the latter half of this year to next year, we will intensively launch our key titles including those we announced in the Wii U Direct - Nintendo Games presentation last week.
As a decisive factor in buying a console is that you cannot play a much-anticipated title without the hardware, we will make a lot of such titles available during this time.
[...]
As the developing cost of games for home consoles has been high, it has been very difficult for third-party developers to take a risk by developing games only for one home video game console. We therefore have had various discussions with software developers for the projects.

Our in-house development team will create Nintendo-like unique games on our own and various games with the help of second-party development companies. However, this is not enough to have a large variety of games, and we have to do something to strengthen our lineup. Our efforts include the cooperative development of our IP games like the new "Super Smash Bros. (temp.)" which we are developing with Namco Bandai and collaboration titles like the one with ATLUS I mentioned before, "LEGO CITY: Undercover" which we are developing with Warner Bros. Entertainment and TT Games, and Ubisoft’s "JUST DANCE" series which was a smash hit in the overseas markets and we localized for the Japanese market. We are willing to actively cooperate with software developers to produce something new beyond the traditional licensing business. We believe that this is possible because Nintendo is not only a platform holder but has a powerful in-house software development team.

[...] we will reorganize our development divisions next month for the first time in nine years. Two divisions which have independently developed handheld devices and home consoles will be united to form the Integrated Research & Development Division, which will be headed by Genyo Takeda, Senior Managing Director.

Last year we also started a project to integrate the architecture for our future platforms. What we mean by integrating platforms is not integrating handhelds devices and home consoles to make only one machine. What we are aiming at is to integrate the architecture to form a common basis for software development so that we can make software assets more transferrable, and operating systems and their build-in applications more portable, regardless of form factor or performance of each platform. They will also work to avoid software lineup shortages or software development delays which tend to happen just after the launch of new hardware.
Some time ago it was technologically impossible to have the same architecture for handheld devices and home consoles and what we did was therefore reasonable. Although it has not been long since we began to integrate the architecture and this will have no short-term result, we believe that it will provide a great benefit to our platform business in the long run.

As Yoshihiro Mori has already briefed you on our forecast for this fiscal year, you are aware that we cannot help posting operating losses for two consecutive fiscal years. We feel greatly accountable for this severe outlook.

Until now we have always shown you our specific earnings forecast for the next fiscal year at the time of our announcement of the full-year financial results. Under this circumstance, however, I am required to tell you about our prospects for when we will be able to retrieve "Nintendo-like" profits again, so I would like to say something here.

For the next fiscal year, with the premise of the current trend of currency exchange rates, the management aim to earn 100 billion yen or more of operating profit by reviving the momentum of our overseas operations.

http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/library/events/130131/04.html
http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/library/events/130131/05.html

Pillole del report finanziario Nintendo del terzo trimestre fiscale 2013, assai importante per i contenuti.

- 3DS
In Giappone la console si è ripresa benissimo, adesso l'obiettivo è ripetere quanto fatto in terra d'origine anche in Occidente: per riuscirci Nintendo ha in programma il rilascio di alcuni titoli "strategici" e la distribuzione di titoli creati da terze parti nipponiche;

- Wii U
Vendite Wii U al di sotto delle aspettative, tuttavia la console è venduta sottocosto e pertanto non è previsto alcun taglio ai listini; l'offerta software verrà opportunamente potenziata tra la primavera e l'estate, inoltre tra la seconda parte dell'anno e il successivo verranno lanciati molti dei titoli mostrati nel recente Nintendo Direct interamente dedicato a Wii U. Iwata ha inoltre ribadito l'intenzione di collaborare con altre software house per lo sviluppo congiunto, ma fuori dagli schemi dei tradizionali accordi di licenza.

- Unificazione R&D home/portatili
A partire dal mese prossimo le due unità operative che si occupano della progettazione delle console home e portatili di Nintendo verranno unificate sotto la Integrated Research & Development Division diretta da Takeda.

Lo scorso anno è stato inoltre avviato un progetto per integrare l'architettura delle future piattaforme Nintendo.
Con questa integrazione, chiarisce Iwata, non si intende la fusione degli hardware home e portatili, bensì la possibilità di avere una base di sviluppo in comune che faciliti la condivisione degli asset ed il trasferimento degli stessi da una piattaforma all'altra indipendentemente da fattori quali ingombro o prestazioni.

- Prospettive per il prossimo anno fiscale (04/2013 --> 03/2014)
Iwata si è assunto la responsabilità (alcuni commentatori arrivano ad ipotizzare che possa lasciare la presidenza in caso di obiettivi non raggiunti) per il secondo anno consecutivo di "rosso" in bilancio; per il prossimo anno fiscale, tassi di cambio permettendo, si punta a raggiungere un operating profit di almeno 100 miliardi di yen grazie alla ripresa sui mercati occidentali.