Reggie on sales of the 3DS in North America compared to Japan, localizing gamesSeptember 27th, 2012 Posted in 3DS, News, Posted by Valay
You may remember a statement made by Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata earlier this year in which he said that sales of the 3DS in the United States and Europe have been “weak” compared to the performance in Japan.
Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime, responding to this and the handheld’s sales in general, jokingly said:
“When he said that, I had a sharp pain in my neck. It was in the middle of the night, and I viscerally reacted to it.”
Fils-Aime followed up with more serious commentary, confirming that sales in Japan have indeed been better than sales in North America:
“The fact of the matter is that Japan is doing better than the North American marketplace. That is a factually true statement. It’s driven by the strong level of support that they’ve had from Japanese third-party publishers. There’s been a number of games like Monster Hunter that did big numbers. But just as important, there was a group of games in the Japanese market that did between 250,000 units and half a million units. Those sustained that gamer desire to have something new on a regular basis.”
Reggie later noted that many of the strong Japanese titles haven’t made it to the North American market. This is changing somewhat with titles such as Kingdom Hearts 3D, which has been a solid success thus far.
There’s one important point here: the 3DS has managed to outpace the DS. The new portable is beating out the 3DS by around one million units.
“At the same point of the life cycle, DS had actually had two holidays, and even with that, Nintendo 3DS is about a million units ahead in terms of installed base versus the DS base… so we’re tracking well.”
Going back to the point of the unlocalized games, Reggie said:
“In the end, this is a business. [Publishers] need to look at the opportunity as far as how much they’re going to sell versus the investment and make a business decision.”
Last but not least, Reggie was reassuring in that Nintendo encourages third-parties to localize some of their games for North America:
“We always engage with third-party publishers about their content and help them make smart decisions. Whether that’s Western publishers or Japanese publishers. There are opportunities for some of these games to come to the Americas. There have been times when we’ve published those games in that type of show of support. We’ve certainly encouraged it.”
你或许还记得年初的时候任天堂总裁岩田聪表示3DS在欧美的表现比在日本要差一些。
雷猩猩对此做出了回应，他半开玩笑的表示：
“听到他这么说，我心都碎了。当时正值半夜，我听了五脏六腑都不爽”
雷猩猩随即更认真的谈论了这个问题，同时也承认了3DS在日本的表现优于北美市场。
“事实上日本市场的情况由于北美市场，这一点无可辩驳。日本市场的兴旺是建立在强大的第三方支持的基础上的。他们有不少像MH3G这样的超大作。更重要的是，在日本有很多销量在25万到50万之间的游戏，这就保证了日本玩家对新游戏能够保持稳定的购买欲”
猩猩还指出很多在日本销量不错的游戏尚未登陆北美。这种局面随着KH3D的本地化有了一些改观，该作取得了不俗的成绩。
这里要指出很重要的一点：3DS的表现已经超越了前辈DS的同期表现。这款新的掌机已经超过了3DS (貌似原文有误，应为DS)的同期销量100万台左右。
“在相同的生命周期里，DS经历了两个圣诞销售旺季，既便如此，3DS依然比DS多买了100万台。所以说，我们的表现并不算差劲。”
话题再次回到本地化问题，猩猩表示：
“说到底这是生意。发行商要对比投资成本以及能达到的销量才能做出决定。”
最后，雷吉再次确认他们欢迎第三方可以为北美玩家本地化他们的游戏。
“我们一直鼓励第三方在北美发行他们的游戏——无论是日本的开发商还是欧美的开发商。许多游戏还是很有希望能够登陆北美的。我们自己已经发行了很多这种游戏以示支持。我们当然鼓励他们这么做”
事实是： 第一方游戏XB即使北美预购秒日本总销量你还是要等两年，欧版出了你也要等一年哦，This is a business