Nintendo Q3 FY3/2016 Financial Results Briefing, Part 3: Wii U

About 690,000 people participated in the latest Japanese Splatfest, which is an all-time high for the event.

☆ NintendObs Event – Nintendo Q3 FY3/2016.

Next, I would like to talk about Wii U.

This graph shows the comparison between the Wii U software sell-through numbers from 2014 and 2015 in the Japanese market.

Since the two key titles, Splatoon released on May 28 last year and Super Mario Maker released on September 10 last year, had kept up their momentum until the year-end sales season, the total sales figure surpassed that of 2014, when Mario Kart 8 and Super Smash Bros. for Wii U were released.

Splatoon has been showing steady sales for a long time since its release last May. It has shipped 4.06 million units worldwide as of the end of the third quarter of this fiscal year.

It has gradually expanded even among kids and female consumers, and we expect more popularity due to word-of-mouth. We can say a good cycle has been established for this title.

We are also trying various measures from an operational perspective, including holding events in and out of the game, to create opportunities for consumers to continue playing it even long after its release. It has contributed to maintaining high usage rate and public attention.

For your information, the number of participants in Japan taking part in events inside the game called “splatfests” has been consistently increasing since the first one. There were approximately 690 thousand participants in the 10th “splatfest” held on January 23 and January 24 in Japan, which is an all-time high number.

This graph compares sell-through transition in Japan from the release week until the new-year holiday sales season for Splatoon to that of a major title released in the same period of the previous year, Mario Kart 8.

Sales of Splatoon have consistently exceeded that of Mario Kart 8 with the exception of the period right after its release. You can also see a substantially bigger sell-through of the title in the year-end sales season.

Splatoon is not losing momentum even after the start of a new year and we anticipate it has the potential to be a long-selling title.

Last September, we globally released a “create and play” type of Mario software, Super Mario Maker , in which you use the Wii U GamePad controller to freely create 2D Mario courses. This title has been showing steady sales worldwide, and has shipped over three million units as of the end of the third quarter of this fiscal year.

A large increase in the number of players for the game following the year-end sales season has led to over 6.2 million different user-created playable courses, which in turn have been played over 400 million times as of January 27.

In order to keep up the high usage rate of the game, we have been periodically updating the software and expanding related services. We have added functions like “parts” with which users can create a greater variety of courses, and also launched a web portal called “Super Mario Maker Bookmark” in which users can more easily search for interesting courses to play.

This graph shows the comparison between the Wii U hardware sell-through numbers from 2014 and 2015 in the Japanese market.

The momentum of the Splatoon and Super Mario Maker games released last year was maintained until the end of the year, which also drove sales of the hardware.

Thanks to the new Wii U hardware bundles with Splatoon or Super Mario Maker preinstalled having launched in the sales season, the total sales of the hardware increased over the previous year.

This graph shows the comparison between the Nintendo-published Wii U software sell-through numbers from 2014 and 2015 in the US and European markets.

Due to the continuous sales of Mario Kart 8 and Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, both released in 2014, and two strong titles Splatoon and Super Mario Maker released almost at the same time as in Japan, the software sales exceeded the previous year as well.

This graph shows the comparison between the Wii U hardware sell-through numbers from 2014 and 2015 in the US and European markets.

For the year-end sales season, we made available Wii U hardware bundles with Splatoon and Super Smash Bros. for Wii U for the US market and with Splatoon and Mario Kart 8 for the European market. Thanks to the new bundles, Wii U hardware sales were comparable to the previous year in both the US and Europe. Going forward, we will work to keep up the console usage rate of the many consumers who have purchased Wii U in the year-end sales season and encourage them to purchase another title.

— Tatsumi Kimishima, President of Nintendo
Source: Nintendo JP, Nintendo JP.