Supply and Demand

With the release of the Wii, Nintendo has found itself in an enviable position. The company freely admits it is struggling to meet demand for the new console, and yet it's still managing to sell more units than its competitors. It doesn't even see Microsoft and Sony as competitors at all, according to European marketing director Laurent Fischer. That would have sounded like an arrogant statement last year, but with Wii sales figures to back it up, Nintendo isn't carving out a niche, it's carving out a canyon.

GamesIndustry.biz took the recent opportunity to sit down with Fischer to discuss Wii sales, the current stock shortages, how it sees the threat from Sony's new console and why it isn't afraid to delay its key titles if the development team says so.

Laurent Fischer: As you say the start was extremely strong across the Japanese, North American and European markets. But we are still struggling to deliver the right numbers of hardware to cope with demand. Normally with the launch of a console you have a huge demand from the installed fanbase. Today, we're having difficulty coping with demand because of the recruiting power of the Wii. It's even more powerful than anyone had guessed. Demand on a weekly basis is still growing. If I had to say how we're going to handle that in 2007, basically what we need to do is provide more Wii to the market.

We've promised the delivery of six million hardware units by the end of March and that's on track. But it's astonishing to think that with six million we're not able to fulfil the initial demand. Demand is growing on a weekly basis. We're planning to increase the production capacity but it's not something that can be done in a couple of days. We have to be patient. It has been the same with the DS - what we can give to the market is selling through. We're delivering new units to market every week and everyone at Nintendo is working really hard to ensure it's harming the consumer as little as possible.

Definitely. We know that in the Japanese, US and European market to find a Wii on a daily basis it's not so easy. You have to pre-register or pre-order from the retailer. But we're confident the strategy is working, we saw it with the DS, this is what happens when you reach an expanded audience and also keep the regular gaming audience. But when you open this new door it's difficult to measure the reaction you'll get.

We have new Metroid Prime and Super Mario Galaxy games due this year. And as you'll no doubt have noticed form the development community gathered at GDC this year, a lot of developers have a lot of Wii and DS projects. The key point is that all of these developers, since they've been using the Wii dev kit in their hands, they're really focused on using and taking the best elements of the format. It's proper Wii software.

We are proposing a new way to play for the DS and Wii and we think all of these developers have perfectly understood where we wanted to go and we have proven to be right. Last year we were still be questioned over our focus, but now we know that a new door has opened into creativity. Next year, in 2008, all of these things will come together. We'll have a strong release schedule with a lot of new, creative IP from first-party and third-party.

I would remind people that the console has only been on the shelves since December. We already have a lot of software and we have a strong line-up of titles and we have a lot of games on the Virtual Console. At the moment I think we have a strong enough line-up with titles like Super Mario Galaxy and Metroid. I would say that these titles - and this has always been the Nintendo policy - will be on the shelves when the director says so. If the development team says they need one more month or two more months to deliver a unique Wii experience, we're comfortable with that.

At Nintendo I'm marketing director, but I'm proud to say that the marketing department has the last voice. When the product is out it's exactly as the creator intended. It's the way the development studio dreamt it from the very beginning. Some companies may aim to release games at Christmas or for specific financial times of the year - Nintendo has nothing to do with that, it's never been the case.

Because we're already in front of the competition in the Japanese and US markets, I really think the best thing we've learnt from those two markets is that whatever the competition does it doesn't harm what Nintendo is doing with the Wii. We've always said that we don't need to step into this next-generation battle. We're aiming at a new generation.

Whatever Sony and Microsoft does, it doesn't change they way Nintendo works and the way we sell the product. The key point is that as long as you can deliver new and fresh gaming ideas the consumer will stay with you. Whatever the PlayStation 3's success in Europe it won't change the way we operate in the market. You've seen the sales figures in Japan and the US - we're not on the shelves and still we've got higher sales figures.

We're very pleased the PlayStation 3 is available in Europe, and it's nothing to do with being in an arrogant position, but from the very beginning we said we wanted to try a different strategy and now we can see that the strategy is paying off. We still have a lot of work to do - to convince developers and consumers. It took us time to explain what were were doing with the DS and it needed the right software, patience and consistency. Now we're in that position with the Wii, we have a good start but there's more work to be done.

The launch of the Wii has been very successful and we're all aware of this. At the moment the focus for us is to get through the daily work - providing dev kits and support and information for developers. We're not going to be tied by events. At GDC we had the opportunity to talk in-depth about the Nintendo way of working and the Nintendo philosophy - Miyamoto's personal approach. We didn't want to talk about fresh news, but about the long-term way of thinking.

Laurent Fischer is European Marketing Director at Nintendo. Interview by Matt Martin.