Nintendo had their yearly financial briefing for their shareholders yesterday and since they’re publicly published, we can glean some precious Wii U info from it. Here’s a summary of what Nintendo said:
- “As I informed you before, in the first half of this fiscal term we will get out of the situation that we sell the hardware below cost. We anticipate the improvement of the product profitability of the hardware alone.”
- New Super Mario Bros. 2 for 3DS will be launched worldwide in August
- NSMB2 will be Nintendo’s first title available both in 3DS card and digital format.
- Nintendo still has “some unannounced titles” that are coming out within a year
- Nintendo plans to put a large emphasis on the digital downloads of retail games on both the 3DS and Wii U.
- Download codes for digital games will be purchasable at physical retail outlets as well. In addition to this, it will operate like software sales and allow individual stores to set their prices for the digital content potentially allowing for sales, promos, and price competition.
- At the Wii U’s launch the first-party games (at least) will be available for download as well as physical purchase.
- While Nintendo plans to sell DLC for titles, it will not be required to fully enjoy the game. Nintendo plans to continue to make fully-realized games for release and then potentially expand upon them at a later date with DLC instead of blatantly money-grabbing with it.
- The Wii U’s price and release dates (it will at least be before the year’s end in Japan, North America, Europe and Australia) will not be announced at E3, but it’s launch titles and other details will be.
So, at least we know a little more about Nintendo’s plans for digital distribution. If you want to see the full transcript from the meeting, you can check it out here: http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/library/events/120427/index.html
It is often easy to see gaming’s successes, they are well covered in the media, receive accolades and high review scores alike and their achievements are spread throughout the gaming community. It may be more beneficial, therefore, to focus on some of the industry’s more vexing occurrences so that one may avoid such pitfalls and the subsequent loss of their pocketbook contents. Consider then my top five most disappointing developments in gaming of the past year; they are either games that failed to deliver on the promise and potential of the franchise, or video game fads that were lauded to change the industry but perhaps only did so for the worse. Let us know your thoughts on my picks as they are by no means fact, but rest merely in the domain of personal perception. 
