IR Information

Third Quarter Financial Results Briefing
for Fiscal Year Ending March 2011
Jan. 28, 2011
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In Spain, there are 10 titles for Nintendo platforms in the annual software top 20 chart.
Traditionally, Sony has shown a very strong presence in this country, and no Xbox 360 titles can be found in this chart.
An interesting point here is that the top position for Nintendo DS software was taken by "Art Academy", software which is sold under the name of "Egokoro Kyoshitsu DS" in Japan.  This software has been sold in a rather interesting way, so I will elaborate on this later.


This is the annual software top 20 chart for the U.K.  At the nine-month point last year, there were no Nintendo DS titles included in the chart and only six titles for Nintendo platforms could be found, which is the smallest number among all the markets I have introduced today.  However, the annual chart exhibits a couple of Nintendo DS titles and the total number of titles for Nintendo platforms has risen to ten.
"JUST DANCE" took to the top spot among the Wii titles, and "JUST DANCE 2" was also ranked in a good position.
I'd like to add that the U.K. is the only country in which Xbox 360 has as strong a presence as in the U.S., and multi-platform titles are selling more on Xbox 360.  This situation is in stark contrast to Germany, France and Spain.


This is the sales transitions of home consoles in the European market.  Nintendo gathered the data from independent market research companies in the European region to estimate the total sales in Europe.  As I told you before, there was a total of 53 weeks in 2009, but there were only 52 weeks in 2010, so the data in this graph has been modified for ease of comparison.
The graph I showed you at our Corporate Management Policy Briefing at the end of last October contained data up to the 41st week.  At that stage, Wii was in the lowest position among all the consoles, so when I told you that I believed Wii would make a comeback in the year-end sales season, it might have sounded like nothing but a mere dream.  Wii sales rose sharply to the top in the 43rd week, which is when we released the red Wii hardware.  The sales pace picked up even more speed during the year-end sales season, and Wii went back to holding the largest market share.
If we look at the status in fall, I think that few people could have expected that in the peak week of the year-end sales season, Wii hardware would be selling almost twice that of other consoles.
As I mentioned earlier, unlike in the U.S., PS3 sells better than Xbox 360 in Europe.  The only European country which has a relatively similar sales trend to the U.S. is the U.K.


In this graph, Nintendo has gathered and tallied the home console video game hardware unit sales data from 2008 to 2010, disclosed by independent research companies in the U.K., France, Germany and Spain. These four countries are assumed to represent 75% to 80% of the total European market, so I’d like to focus upon these figures to discuss pan-European trends.
It is clear from the quantitative viewpoint that, in Europe, we did not see the noticeable increase in Xbox 360 sales like we observed in the U.S.  When we make the year-on-year comparisons, Wii and PS3 sales decreased, but Xbox 360 sales increased slightly.  Although Wii was able to maintain its status as the best-selling home console hardware, the decline of Wii sales was relatively high.  As for market share, Wii declined by 5%, Xbox increased by 4% and Sony increased its share by 1%.


This is the yearly unit sales transitions of home console software for the last three years.
As with the hardware, the home console software market as a whole showed a slight decline.


Sony's market share as a whole was at a standstill by PS3 taking the PS2 market share, but Wii's software market share in Europe decreased to be a little less than that of PS3 last year.


This is the sales transitions of handheld hardware in Europe.
As for the first half of 2010, a significant year-on-year decrease was observed since the corresponding period a year ago had been shortly after the launch of Nintendo DSi and the market had been active.  As for the fall of 2010 and thereafter, however, even though the sales level could not reach that of the previous year, when we take into consideration that the launch of Nintendo 3DS had already been announced, the level of decline was not very big, and I can say that the performance was relatively steady.


This graph shows the unit sales transitions of handheld hardware in Europe.
Nintendo DS hardware sales decreased by a great degree for two years in a row, particularly due to the large declines from spring to summer last year.  This may be contrary to your expectation, however, the market share of Nintendo DS slightly increased in contrast.


We are now looking at the transitions of the handheld software unit sales in Europe.
The European handheld software market had once rapidly grown to a level which could be compared with that in the U.S.  However, while the home console software market has been able to maintain a similar market size over the past two years, the handheld software failed to do the same in Europe.
It’s been said that the illegal copies of software have had significant impact in Europe.  In addition, we analyze that another reason for the declining market size is the low active-use ratio of Nintendo DS hardware for the lack of new software titles selling very well.


Although Nintendo DS has kept its high market share, we are far from satisfied with the current handheld software market.  We will be working to revive the market with various efforts, including the launch of Nintendo 3DS.


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