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Monday, July 9, 2018

Nintendo 78th Annual Meeting of Shareholders: Fun Q&A!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - No, the amusement park won't take away from game sales.

I like to share Nintendo-related moments of amusement with my audience. In that spirit, here is the questions & answers summary from Nintendo's 78th Annual General Meeting of Shareholders, which may be the last time we ever see now-former president Tatsumi Kimishima say stuff to people. (The meeting took place on June 28, and the Board of Directors voted in Shuntaro Furukawa as the new president after the questions.)

I guess I'll just give a paragraph to interesting question-answer combinations and let you know which I'm talking about. That sound alright?

Take Question 2, for example. The investor is freaking out about Nintendo's stock price, which is falling ever since E3 2018 and before. (Buy low, sell high, folks.) Just to illustrate:


Nintendo NTDOY stock price chart April to July 2018 falling
In the picture: Nintendo's stock collapsing since the end of April.
(As you can see from the watermark, courtesy of Yahoo! Finance.)


Shinya Takahashi and Kimishima discussed E3 to divert the topic, and Shinya Takahashi claimed that E3 2018 was dedicated to not only Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, but also Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu! and Pokémon: Let's Go, Eevee!. And I'm not too sure, based on what we saw, that the latter is true. It only had one (lame) appearance on Nintendo Treehouse Live, after all. It was at the beginning to get it out of the way.

In Question 3, a shareholder cites a “report that Nintendo Labo has been selling poorly.” (The Labo isn't something I believe is italics-worthy, but they italicised it here. They don't italicise it in any of Nintendo's marketing material.) Kimishima hasn't given up on the Nintendo Labo and he sees it as something that requires more education to the market before it can blossom in sales. Well, in that case, KoopaTV will continue to educate the market about the Nintendo Labo as well, such as why you shouldn't buy the Nintendo Labo. And the Nintendo Labo can compromise you. The Nintendo Labo is also not good for BABIES.

I'm just going to directly quote the entirety of Question 6:

“Do you foresee a synergy between Nintendo attractions under development in Universal Studios Japan with any products you have out for sale now? I am fearful that visitors might be satisfied with these attractions alone, and so sales of Nintendo products might fall, so I am curious what kind of outlook you have based your decisions on.”
I think it speaks for itself — the investor is worried that the Universal theme parks will cause sales of Nintendo gaming products to fall. That's sort of like saying that having Nintendo merchandise like plushies would cause game sales to fall. It's an absurd fear and that particular shareholder is silly.

Shigeru Miyamoto chimes into him and name-drops the Tokyo Olympics (notable for the early introduction of Cappy capturing the Prime Minister of Japan), and then discusses that parents today grew up playing Super Mario and are now playing the Labo with their kids. (Nevermind that Nintendo just said that it's the role of the 3DS to help raise your kids to be game players, not the Labo.) The Labo is notable for teaming up with Cappy to possess people and cardboard objects (as discussed in the paragraph about question 3), so the fact that's precisely what Shigeru Miyamoto is name-dropping (the Tokyo Olympics, Labo, Super Mario) is troublesome concerning Miyamoto's role in all of this.

In Question 8, Kimishima is asked about how the number of Splatoon 2 players will drop once Nintendo Switch Online becomes a paid service and is in effect in two months. Kimishima avoids the question. Hm...

Question 11 is awesome, since I think it's the first time that Kirby and/or music have been asked about in one of these investor settings. It's awesome that Kirby's amazing music is being acknowledged to the highest executive levels of Nintendo! The investor, who is probably a great dude, wants Nintendo to sell their soundtracks as a way to get more money. He also wants the return of the Kirby anime! That Takahashi guy gives an answer that's basically saying it's a long story and he doesn't want to talk about it. It's then up to Shigeru Miyamoto of all people to say...

“Game music is one of the pillars of our content,”
Miyamoto may hate stories and characters, but he's a fan of good music? Well, I guess he isn't a completely negative influence on the company!

As for Question 13? That one is about a company called MariCAR Inc... and it's such an interesting story, that I'm going to dedicate an entire, separate article to it. Stay tuned!


As of publishing, Ludwig is an investor in NTDOY stock, so this is relevant to his financial future. This is disclaimed in KoopaTV's Disclaimers page. Which was your favourite question?


Ludwig regularly does analysis on these Q&A sessions. Here's one from 8 months ago. 
There was just one of these featuring Furukawa and Kimishima together.
Here is the article about Question 13 and MariCAR.

2 comments :

  1. I was fortunate to get the Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and Majora's Mask soundtracks back when Club Nintendo was around. Today, we hardly ever receive official albums anymore unless it is packed in an expensive limited edition bundle. I do not what is stopping them from releasing soundtracks since it seems that a lot of people would be interested in buying them even if they were just on iTunes.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The answer from Takahashi was basically a non-answer saying that Nintendo won't be selling soundtracks (even just digitally) to games. I really would like to get an explanation as to why that is and what the story is.

      Any theories?

      Delete

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