You need to run the company on an even keel, and you need to be thinking about the company long-term and how to drive your next innovation.
— Reggie Fils-Aime
We brought augmented reality to the marketplace with Nintendo 3DS. We made it fun; we made it social.
For Nintendo Switch, it really is about a big-game experience.
The fact that the Nintendo 3DS business is backwards compatible incentivizes us to get as many new consumers into the core DS platform as possible.
I grew up playing the Super Nintendo.
We don't do things the same way everyone else does. We relish being different. We see that difference as an element that makes us more compelling to the consumer.
We respect all of our competitors, and when I talk about our competitors, all of our competitors for entertainment time and leisure time.
The reality is, the way that online experiences have progressed, it's an expensive proposition. The amount of servers we need to support 'Smash Brothers' or 'Mario Kart' - these big multiplayer games - is not a small investment.
We want Miitomo to create an atmosphere that's distinctly Nintendo.
The gaming enthusiast that buys a tremendous amount of games is truly insatiable.
We believe that either our own teams or teams that we direct are best capable of creating 'Mario' games that will live up to the franchise. The same is true for 'Metroid' and 'Zelda' and all those wonderful properties. For us, we want to control those characters as a key corporate equity.
The competitive landscape for us is very broad. We see ourselves in the entertainment space. We compete with listening to the radio. We compete with watching TV. We compete with social networks.
Our strategy with DSiWare is the same as with WiiWare in that we want to provide new experiences every week.
When you think about a new platform, what will define it as a long-term success are the ongoing range of games and experiences that come to the platform - not what's available on Day One.
As a child, I envisioned a career in the hard sciences. In sixth grade, I was buying college chemistry textbooks.
The Wii U is not a tablet. It's a two-screen experience. And so you have this unique GamePad that gives you a different way to have a gaming experience.
If you just sit on what you've created, chances are you're not going to be around much longer.
With risk, sometimes you have tremendous success, sometimes not so much.
We constantly push the edge on technology. But for us, technology needs to be fun.
Nintendo prides itself in being a technology-driven, mass-market, entertainment company.
I'm passionate about what I do.
In particular, in the Americas that I have responsibility for, 'Zelda' is a franchise that is very well developed.
Nintendo looks at every technology. Often times, we look at technology before it really is considered mass-market ready. The original DS had touch screen on a device. First time that a mass market product had touch screen built in.
There is a reason why, on a DS, you get that little click when you press a button. There is a reason that it was important to have a microphone in the Wii Remote.
We expect people's experience with Miitomo to be a rewarding one in its own right. But at the same time, it's also a way to have them engage - or reengage - with Nintendo.
It's true that Miitomo, at its core, aims to foster social engagement. That's what it's all about.
We, as a company, take the most risks in pushing the boundaries on consumer expectations.
We believe that creating a 'Mario' game is a special endeavor.
The appeal of Wii to nongamers has taken away some of the seasonality of sales we've come to expect in the past.
That's what DSi is all about: Providing simple, quick-to-master experiences that everybody can pick up and enjoy.
The 3DS is a fantastic machine with more than 1,000 games. Its key differentiator is the 3D immersive experience without need for glasses. But as good as that machine is, you can't play a game like 'Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild' on it.
Both of my parents were college-educated within the curriculum in Haiti. When they came to the United States, both had to learn English. My mother worked in retail and continues to do so today, working as the lead sales representative in a fine-jewelry store. My father became a machinist.
We've always been an entertainment company.
For the Nintendo Switch, we were very deliberate in wanting to make sure, from a Nintendo publish standpoint, that we had a steady cadence of great games in addition to strong titles at launch.
With innovation, there is always risk.
We want the technology in our devices to enable a social experience.
Our strategy is gaming for the masses.
My favourite game is 'The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past.'
We want the consumer who has bought into the Nintendo Switch platform. When there's a great third party experience, we want them to jump in immediately.
We've always anticipated that, as Nintendo would demonstrate business potential with an idea, others would follow. And we believe that based on history - rumble, joystick - things that we invented, if you will, and first put in video games, others quickly latched on to.
We have worked with a range of input approaches. We've worked with the range of mechanisms to drive immersion into the gaming experience.
One of the key components of Miitomo is that you are connecting with your friends. That is a significant measure to ensure that the user experience is consistently pleasant.
We love experimentation. That's where the gold nuggets come from.
In the end, we don't believe in launching any type of product if it isn't perfect in our eyes.
We compete with all of the time that consumers spend when they're not sleeping, they're not eating, not going to work or going to school. Because everything else is entertainment time.
One of the things that... I've seen Nintendo do so well is provide a user interface that is intuitive, easy to navigate, easy to execute against - and in our view, that's exactly what we've done on DSi.
If Wii was about gaming for the masses, then think of DSi as creativity for the masses.
I was accepted into Cornell in 1979 and went there to follow a finance and business path. I ended up pursuing marketing and sales because I was selected by Procter & Gamble as an undergraduate candidate to go into its brand management program, which is typically available only to M.B.A. candidates.
I grew up in a lower-middle-class environment, usually the lone minority among my classmates.
In the end, given the way we view the world and the way that we view ourselves as an entertainment company, our biggest challenge is creating content and creating services. Excite people. We were fortunate we were able to do that with the Wii.
