Iwata:

  The so-called late-majority consumers are the ones to whom it is challenging to sell products to even when they have some interest in the subject products and, in the world of general marketing, in order to sell products to the late-majority consumers, it is said that we cannot use an effective marketing approach, that we need to spend additional costs, that we need to take extra time, that we need to repeatedly dispatch messages for them to increase their awareness and that, in the end, at the retail outlets, we need to encourage them to make the final step forward to purchase the products. As one of the reasons why we are saying that we can expect to sell our products to such consumers in the upcoming year-end sales season, I explained about the early indications of how they would positively react to the attractive offers from the retailers. In addition, we believe that "family agreement" will play an important role in their purchase decision making process at home.

  As I have often said in the past, we have an indicator called "number of users per household," which shows an average of how many people inside a household, which owns a game machine, are actually using the hardware. For years, we have been surveying this figure. Until Wii, there used to be no game machine which was able to have three or more users per household on average. However, this hardware (Wii) has been able to keep three or more users constantly since its launch. The average users per household includes the households of single people, so when the average number per household is three or more, it means, in the case of four-person households, everyone plays with the hardware at a substantial number of these subject households. Otherwise, the average user number could not exceed three. When we compare our numbers with that for other companies' platforms, there are clear differences. When one member of a family purchases and returns home with a new video game system, whether the entire family will welcome the purchase or if just a few of the members, if any, are expected to appreciate it will become a critical factor for the consumers who are hesitant in making a purchase decision, I believe.
  Christmas is very important season in the U.S. and in Europe. High priority is put on sharing common time and joy among the family then. For ordinary products, the need for additional costs and extra promotional activities are regarded as a must in order to sell them to the late majority. But our belief for our products is that we may be able to sell our products as long as we have been able to lay out a situation where our consumers can remember our products and can make the final purchase decision when the appropriate time comes. We are not thinking that we will need to mark down our products by the end of this year in order to achieve our sales forecasts. Of course, I'm not saying that the company will never change the price of its products. I'm just saying that we have no such plan in the near future.
  As for your question of the expected sales level for this year-end, and first about your comment that "New Super Mario Bros. Wii" drove our 2009 sales, while I share the same impression that the title greatly contributed to our sales in Japan, when we saw the U.S. and Europe, I do not think "New Super Mario Bros. Wii" alone was driving Wii hardware sales in those regions. Actually, several different factors were intertwined, and as we were increasing the number of reasons and incentives for consumers to purchase Wii, when a certain threshold was reached, the consumers made moves. As the consumers become more patient, that threshold level increases a little too.

  So, Nintendo has been trying to go beyond that threshold by adding to the number of evergreen titles such new titles as "Donkey Kong Country Returns" that will be launched this year and such endeavors as our collaboration in retailers' campaigns, not to mention the Super Mario Bros. 25th Anniversary Campaign and the launches of new dedicated hardware. If we can successfully pile up each one of these different incentives, the number of consumers who are willing to cross the final hurdle should be near the 2009 level even if it cannot actually reach the 2009 level. We cannot guarantee specific numbers for the future, but this is how we see the market today.