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Should the Wii U not be as big a success as you’re hoping for, then you’ll have a generation of kids who grow up without exposure to Mario or Zelda. Won’t the value of your intellectual property go down in such a case? |
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Iwata: First, I have to say that if I didn’t have faith in what we’re doing, I wouldn’t continue in my role as the president. So thoughts like you just mentioned don’t enter my mind. We are working on the Wii U to ensure that many people understand the appeal of that system. But at the same time, we have obviously different hardware systems, and we do take advantage and leverage our IP in different ways on these different systems, and that allows us to essentially, if things don’t go as planned, still have an ability by leveraging some of those other platforms to maintain the value of our IP and ensure that people have an opportunity to come into contact with it. That’s, I think, one of the important roles that I am playing, and I have faith that I’ll be able to maintain the high value of Nintendo’s franchises. |
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Can you explain when the Wii U will be launched and what it will be packaged with? There have been talks about having one touchpad controller and then other users playing with three or four Wii Remotes, so what will be included in the package when the Wii U is launched? |
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Iwata: First of all, here at E3, we’re not talking specifically about what will be packaged with the hardware system itself. The only thing I can say clearly is that we will definitely package the Wii U system with one Wii U GamePad because without those two elements, you do not have a complete Wii U system. But beyond that, in terms of what will be going into the box, I will talk about that more in the future when we go into more detail on pricing and other information. There are 190 million Wii Remotes out in the marketplace around the world. As Reggie pointed out in our presentation at E3 yesterday, there are also quite a large number of Wii Balance Boards. We look at both of those as important assets that we would like to continue to leverage. |
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Do you anticipate that the Yen will continue to pose challenges for the company going forward, and if so, what other actions can you take? |
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Iwata: With regards specifically to the Japanese exchange rate against the U.S. dollar, we have proactively looked at how we acquire our materials and components. The fluctuations of this exchange rate do not have as big of an impact as they did in the past. However, I can say that in relation to the Yen exchange rate versus the Euro, it is not as easy to achieve or to make an improvement in the same way, because fewer of our partners are willing to take payments in Euros as compared with partners we are dealing with in U.S. dollars. With regard to the Euro exchange rate, due to its fluctuations, it is continuing to have an impact on our earnings. This is common to all manufacturers in Japan right now and we are looking for ways to cope with it. But unfortunately, I don’t have a definitive solution that I can talk to you about today. Meanwhile, we are considering whether we can convert the transaction currencies for expenses incurred in Japan from Japanese Yen to Euros or U.S. dollars to bring favorable impacts on our financial condition. That applies not only to procurement but also to other costs. For the future, we’re looking at ways to make payments in foreign currencies for various expenses incurred in Japan. For example, if we were to look at activities that we were working on with a particular partner in Japan, and if we were able to find an opportunity to conduct similar activities with a partner overseas in a way that didn’t lead to a decrease in the quality of the work and, at the same time, if we could get benefits out of that, we would proactively look at opportunities to make payments in foreign currencies. I think that the current exchange rate situation will not continue for that long from the viewpoint of the overall national economic situation. We believe a change in the trend will certainly come and we are in the process of preparing for it in various ways. We don’t think it is right to apply methods which cannot be altered once they are implemented. |