Nintendo Wants to Produce More Anime, Shareholders Want Advance Tickets to Nintendo Land at Annual Meeting
Nintendo also reaffirms support for the 3DS.
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Yesterday in Japan, Nintendo held its 77th Annual General Meetings of Shareholders where, as the name suggests, Nintendo shareholders gather to discuss the business state of Nintendo. Along with some housekeeping regarding the sales and business of Nintendo, the company opened itself to a Q&A with shareholders which discussed everything from PC game development, non-gaming media, and future investments.
Thanks to a transcript of the meeting provided on Twitter by Alex Aniel and @NStyles, and gathered by NintendoEverything, we have a good understanding about what went on at the Shareholders meeting. However, the most interesting answers Nintendo (represented at the meeting by Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima, General Manager Shinya Takahashi, and Shigeru Miyamoto) gave were in regards to future plans in regards to how Nintendo can expand its business.
An early question about whether or not Nintendo plans on making PC software/hardware for example was met with a rather noncommittal response from Nintendo corporate. Nintendo president Kimishima responded by saying that the company is aware there are many PC users but cites Nintendo's unified soft/hardware approach as "good". Kimishima does bring up smartphone support as an avenue beyond just Nintendo hardware. Miyamoto added that PC didn't seem to have much attention at E3 this year, compared to what Takahashi noticed as an overwhelming crowd for the Nintendo booth, as well as Miyamoto's appearance at the Ubisoft conference.
Nintendo first announced that the company will be venturing into mobile games back in 2015. At the time, this was big news considering how stringent Nintendo has been regarding its IPs on non-Nintendo hardware. Since then however, games like Fire Emblem Heroes and Mario Run have gone on to garner millions of downloads across the globe.
Another question regarding Nintendo's future business plans was in regards to product video, specifically a question from a shareholder asking whether or not old content like the Kirby anime will come out on blu-ray (they must really like the Kirby anime).
For this, Miyamoto gave a more definitive answer saying Nintendo wants to make anime for IPs like Pikman, Star Fox, Yoshi, and utilize some kind of free or integrated distribution model. Nintendo previously released animated shorts based on Kid Icarus on the 3DS for free, though only for a limited time. Perhaps this could mean a return to a similar model for the Switch or, once again on the 3DS.
Which speaking of the 3DS a shareholder brought up again the question of how Nintendo plans on reconciling the Nintendo Switch with the 3DS now that there's going to be a new Pokemon game for the hybrid console. Interestingly enough, Kimishima said there were no details on Pokemon Switch yet but the 3DS' continued success means continued support, which is a common line from Nintendo.
The rest of the Q&A was reserved for more specific, shareholder related questions such as if the company will be more flexible with how to buy Nintendo stock, how the company will utilize a 1 Trillion Yen cash vault, and whether shareholders will get advance tickets to Universal's Nintendo World. So while the rest of the meeting was relatively straightforward, it's interesting to see Nintendo come out rather unimpressed by the state of PC gaming, while also looking into branching off into multimedia products like anime and the developing theme park at Universal Studios.
