 Welcome back to the Nintendo Prime podcast episode 15 so a couple notes before we get going here we are recording this the day that Fire Emblem Heroes comes out on phones we are in North America so of course it hasn't released yet that's our luck but it'll race at some point today supposedly so we will be talking about that on the following episode so even though this episode is running the entire week of like the first week of the game being out we'll be talking about it the week after so what's nice about that though is that we'll have a lot more time to play it before we talk about it and we'll probably have our review of it one of our it might be the very first review we're doing it in the Nintendo Prime yeah it will not be a video review because I do not currently have the ability to record footage off my phone but we will have a nice written review of screenshots and yeah and we'll both have played it hopefully extensively because it's Fire Emblem and you've been wanting to play Fire Emblem forever so this finally gives you an excuse that doesn't cost you any money there's that so so you have a perspective of someone who's played Fire Emblem someone who hasn't which is should make for an interesting discussion next week that's might be the only note I have oh also Yoshi's Woolly World comes out the day after this it's a 2d science going platformer originally came out with you they're bringing it to 3ds they added some poochy levels some new character obviously we're not gonna be talking about that we do not have a copy of the game didn't get a review copy and we that hasn't come out yet wait is poochy like the dog from the dog yeah yeah so they I don't think he's really you they only yeah okay I I'm not an expert on the history of Yoshi yeah yeah see you don't see see proof he has more Nintendo knowledge with some things than I do yeah I can't remember the Yoshi game it's but it's they got that's basically like Tetris can't remember Chris is gonna kill me for that so we do have some awesome topics this week because Nintendo just got done with their investors meeting and there's a lot of interesting things to come out of it but the interesting most interesting stuff came in the post meeting interviews they did and one of those in one of those Tetsumi Kimishima who is the president and CEO of Nintendo of Japan which basically means he runs the entire company because Nintendo Japan is the headquarters all of Nintendo he came out in talk I don't know if it was an interview it was kind of advertised as a conversation he had with Japanese outlet Nikki and he basically says that the Nintendo switch he is he sees that the Nintendo switch could sell as well as the we did now let's put this in context because I don't know if you understand how much you know about the sales of Nintendo systems probably not a lot I know we kind of talked about it past but I don't remember anything off the top of my head well let's let me just draw this up I'll put a diagram up on the video version of the podcast to so the Wii was kind of like an anomaly so the Wii was an anomaly it is the best selling home console they've ever released not the best selling system we've ever released that would be Nintendo DS which sold like a hundred fifty four right right I'm getting obviously the Gameboy such game with color had hit a hundred eighteen but for home consoles the Wii sold a hundred and what a hundred one maybe a hundred or two by now play but you know you kind of go down this list here and you know the next best was the NES with the very first home console they released at sixty one point nine one and then after that was a Super Nintendo at forty nine pretty decent chunk lower than the NES and sixty four at thirty two pretty decent chunk lower than the Super Nintendo and the GameCube weight on here at twenty one point seven four and the Wii U is somewhere just under the game right there yeah yeah it's not good yeah like everything below the game really below the Wii U basically yeah I was gonna say that's kind of an anomaly but where it kind of systems start out strong then kind of just drops off the next system that comes out and then all of a sudden the Wii is like yeah yeah it's basically the NES is really popular and then every console they've released except we has sold less and less including the Wii U so like you eliminate Wii from the equation Wii U almost looks like the natural fall-off from yeah GameCube so there's been this trend of the sales going down and then we spike and then down again and then by down again you mean weight on yes so like for him to be to say we think or he thinks the switch could sell as well as the Wii that's crazy they've only ever done it once yeah they couldn't even get the NES to sell that well so like as excited as I am for the switch and as awesome as it is that they have sold through apparently their initial two million that they're gonna make they're ramping up production to make more to try to meet demand and they're doing you know what we're gonna talk they don't think of the first ever ad going on in the Super Bowl and it's specifically for the switch it's nice that you know it and apparently the Nintendo America's PR marketing head that came out and said it wasn't Reggie it's somebody else can't remember his name off top of head now that they have like a 15 month plan right now for advertising the switch so whatever it's gonna get a huge marketing campaign but like Wii numbers like why do you why why do you think that we was successful where the other Nintendo systems were not as successful I think it's because it's something different the whole motion controls it felt some of the games that they came out with it felt natural to have these motion controls and again it was just something that was totally different and I think it hit a niche that wasn't filled before and did it really well I don't know if I can go a hundred one million a niche well that's one of the number two best selling home console of all time to me you know because there's a lot of factors I think they led to the Wii success and one of them was that really sense the PlayStation 2 era when they added twin sticks to the controllers you could argue that for a lot of adults and a lot of people controllers got too complicated so yeah you to us it's whatever we grew up with gaming it just felt not like a natural evolution you have one stick on the n64 gamecube at two sticks PlayStation 2 at two sticks Xbox at two sticks like it felt like a natural evolution of what we experienced but it wasn't very inviting for new players right because they've never helped anything like this before and they're like this is just too confusing how do you move and aim with two different sticks how you know strafing and that's just shooting games but in general controls got really complicated and Nintendo with the gamecube tried doing basically controller like everyone else had and they actually the gamecube was a relatively powerful system it wasn't as powerful as the Xbox but it was just below the Xbox and ahead of the PlayStation 2 so like gamecube is the last time Nintendo Nintendo was even competitive power-wise like we're pairing with other consoles too and there's a whole bunch of reasons why the gamecube wasn't as successful and I don't think anything to do with the power so it's really weird to decide not to use power but with the Wii I think Nintendo's thought process was we need to simplify controls again and make it make sense and the motion controls the idea and this is what Wii Sports really hit on is that instead of feeling like a controller it should just feel like an extension of your body right so Wii Sports it feels like you're bowling it feels like you're swimming in a bat it feels like playing tennis and that's great obviously it wasn't perfect but at the time no people hadn't experienced this before right so it felt like an evolution in a way to get people back into gaming there or get them into gaming for the first time because it made sense and it was simple and when you had to use buttons there was only two buttons over here and a d-pad right there was a trigger which made sense your finger naturally fall there and a trigger and a joystick as an optional add-on so it was very simplistic compared to what other companies were doing and it seemed to be able to do everything the other companies could do just in a different way like it didn't feel like games were held back because of it in fact that at one point after the Wii U came out they had to separate out people who used Wiimotes and Nunchucks from people who were playing with the gamepad and call of duty because basically everyone who was using Wiimotes and Nunchucks was dominating anyone who used the gamepad because it was far more accurate yeah then you know all the whole pointing and shooting just like using your mouse and the keyboard is a hell of a lot more accurate than you can twin sticks sorry for any console purists that are you otherwise but it's it's like a known fact that it might seem weird to you at first but if you do it enough it is far more accurate than the twin stick controls and that's one reason that even in Splatoon that like some people like the gyro controls over the gyro aiming over the stick aiming because again it's more accurate if you just get used to it it feels weird but it's better so the Wii kind of built upon in my mind this idea that gaming was getting too complicated and it need to be simplified so it brought in a whole new generation I think of adults and kids into gaming that probably went to God into otherwise this was also before like a year before smart devices became a thing and probably two or three years before smart devices became popular right so it hit at a time when there there wasn't a whole bunch of tablets on the market and there wasn't a whole bunch of touchscreen phones and so kids weren't engaging with games really outside of video game consoles right so it kind of hit at a time where the market needed to be reminded that gaming doesn't have to be complicated and then obviously the specs of it is well how they were able to keep the price down to 250 at launch and that helped get its mass market appeal which 250 200 to 250 is what Nintendo has always launched their consoles at always except for the Wii we use the exception at launching at 350 and now the switches launching at 300 right so and relatively like thinking oh man the n64 launched like $200 yeah grand $200 back then like 500 today but yeah right yeah you know it was still all the tone of money back then yeah like just imagining that that that system costs what the Xbox one cost this generation when it launched and people thought that was too expensive right back then $200 everyone was willing to accept that price yeah anyways so the Wii had the Wii sports which was a huge reason for its success yep I had 12 Princess obviously at launch which helped bring some of the core Nintendo fans over right we're gonna buy the game for Wii sports or red steel or anything else that came out at the time yep and then it provided a way to play that looked fun looked entertaining was easy to understand so it created a fad the Wii was a fad console and fads get really really popular yep and they sync just as fast as they get popular so like the Wii's basically sold most of its 100 million consoles in the first three years yeah so it went 2006 the end of 2006 through the end of 2009 and then in 2010 that's when the sales just kind of you know yeah and that's about the time that I think the Wii U should have came out and it should have been the Wii U it should have just been no gamepad and it should have just been the Wii and HD just upgraded to 360 capabilities keep the same controllers you know with a new motion plus and just have all your games mean HD I think that would have been like what they did with the Wii U I think was a obviously mistake but if they would have did we HD in 2010 right as the momentum was starting to come down they could have really built that Monday over hate now you have all the HD TVs no night I get the new Wii yeah so you can play all your Wii games and HD right now obviously they would have these patches and below but they could have made it happen I think it would have been a smart move but that's not what they did so the Wii was was a fad it was a three-year fad kind of faded out petered out ended up topping 100 million you know buying far and away a massive success tons of games I know a lot of people look back look back at me era like hardcore Nintendo fans like oh man we are a sucks it's changed Nintendo forever yeah maybe it has you know but you know and that's one reason they're upset about switch all switch one have motion controls it wasn't for the Wii yeah but that's why most girls bad yeah right exactly I have not yet heard one legit reason because some of the motion controls are bad why because you'd rather use two sticks what good things which has that so it's like right you don't have to use motion controls but even in arms everyone freaking out they already confirmed you don't have to use motion controls and arms yeah I'm probably gonna use motion controls I think it's gonna be more fun right but if it turns out that it controls better with the standard controls and I will so for him to come out and say the switch is gonna sell as much as the Wii to me means that it's kind of a positive and a negative because it sells much as the Wii it would have to be another fad mm-hmm which means a meteoric rise for a few years and then it just tanks which I assume they have a better plan in place to maintain momentum like so having to switch to come out you know or something right but so that's that's on the positive end I guess that it's a fad that gets really really really popular and it sells a crazy the negative of that is that it will just think just as fast and the switch will go by the wayside and then right we're stuck wondering what's what's next again ten years yeah and so I don't want to say that I don't want the switch to be as successful the Wii heck I would love if it also the PlayStation 2 yeah yeah PlayStation 2 what 155 plus a million yeah I would love if it top that yeah oh yeah for sure but I think that there's two things they're gonna work against it because this isn't a topic that we have this week so I'm just gonna bring it up now that that's going to keep a shema and E.J. annual I've both stated in separate interviews now that they are not ruling out that the 3ds might have a successor so that the switch isn't home console and the handle it's just a home console you take on the goal and we are gonna have a 3ds successor okay they're not saying that's going to happen but it's something they're considering because they think they could serve two different markets apparently I don't know what market you could serve with another handheld that the switch can't do outside of making like more affordable I guess yeah I mean maybe battery life I don't but the battery life of the switch is actually on par with the new 3ds XL is it okay so it's like I know a lot of people complain about the switch better like it's actually on par with something they already have out there that everyone know no one's complaining about the battery life in the SXL right so now you're gonna complain about the better life of a home console level especially playing a lot more like yeah breath of the wild oh man you get three hours out of the game yeah well I could only get three hours or the Hyrule Warriors on the new 3ds XL so like to me it's acceptable but so there's a couple of factors here that one I think if they do release a successor to 3ds it's gonna really hurt switch sales yep so I think a lot of switch sales because of its portability factor because it's home console factor is some of it's based on the fact that they assume even though the Nintendo's never stated it that all their handheld games are gonna be coming to switch yeah even if they release a 3ds successor all the games that come on to that successor will also be on switch they haven't said that great we know there are some games that go across systems fire emblem warriors apparently gonna be on 3ds as well as switch mm-hmm okay but you know Yoshi's Willy World was on 3ds and Wii U Smash Bros. on 3ds Wii so like it's not unheard of to do this but that's not every game like there is a new game a new exclusive fire I'm a game coming to switch is a new exclusive fire I'm a game coming to 3ds mm-hmm but beyond that you know people I think buy the switch assuming next Pokemon games come into it well now if you're somebody's gonna be 3ds successor that just gives the Pokemon company a reason to not support a home console level system yep and that sucks you don't want that to be a thing yeah so I think if a 3ds successor comes up it is gonna hurt switch sales we especially in Japan where they love portable and they had huge lines for the switch and if they find out oh we're not gonna get our portable games we're not getting our monster hunter on here we're not getting our Pokemon on here I'm not getting our yokai watch that's all going to the 3ds and 3ds successor they're gonna just drop off a planet and not buy the system anymore so that's one thing I think you could hurt the sales and two I don't I almost don't want it to be that successful as a fad because I don't want it to be a fad right as fads fade right Jinko jeans nice bell bottoms wow you know like like think about the clothing fads out there the music fads you know the day of the Backstreet Boys and Synchro Britney Spears pop stars like that that era is gone now now pop it's not popular music is more like hip-hop and stuff and yeah that kind of music still exists don't give me oh yeah I mean you know every now and then you'll get one of one there's some group out there some individual they got a song really high on the list that is traditional 90s pop but they don't dominate anymore it's a fad so like I don't want this to be a fad I want this to be almost like the thing is like Nintendo doesn't have anything their history that tells me what I want it to be because I was gonna say I want this to be at the NES so 50 to 60 million units is successful not as successful as we were successful enough to get a switch to a switch 3 switch 4 before they changed things up again and the problem with that is each one of those versions sold less and less and I don't want that to be right a trend again right so I don't know what they have to do to make it be consistently successful we obviously have no idea where technology is going to be a decade from now but overall I think he probably shouldn't have said this yeah I think it gives off the wrong impression that they've been given off with the switches all time the switch is a serious system like not just the 3ds thing the switch is this system that's for adults that are busy lives that's basically what the ad I mean you know we're gonna talk about the Super Bowl ad later but you know it clearly shows adults with busy lives like yep like they keep pushing that forward like yeah it's got motion controls and all that stuff but adults with busy lives and the Wii wasn't really for a system for adults with busy lives it was for people who had time to play games at home yep in the living room with their family which hopefully that still happens for some people but reality is like now my kids are getting older they're sports all the time like oh we're on the go all the time so like yep that's what the switch makes sense for my lifestyle oh yeah so I I think it's nice to have an internal goal to try to reach Wii sales I think every company would like to know their system is going to sell 100 million units great the PlayStation 4 sales are slowing down a little bit so now that might not even hit 100 million but I don't know like it doesn't need to sell as much as the Wii to be as assessed to you no I don't know what numbers but well they said the game the GameCube was a failure according to them and that sold like 22 million right and that's what led to the Wii the Wii was obviously a bigger failure right and that led to the Switch which I know is weird because like it doesn't feel like it's big of a transition because a lot of people say the Switch is what the Wii should have been no one's saying that the Wii is what the GameCube should have been right yeah because the Wii is radically different from the GameCube so and the Switch doesn't feel radically different from the Wii it just feels like it's better presented and packaged yeah I think with all the hype that I'm hearing I even if it is a Fed I really do think that this is gonna be a good Fed a good Fed yeah I think it's gonna do well for Nintendo well I think it's nice if for some reason this is a Fed is that the primary reason it will be a Fed is because you could do your gaming at home and your gaming on the go and the primary reason you're gonna primary way you're gonna control that is gonna be with traditional controls so like even if it's a Fed it's a Fed that supports gaming as we know it today yeah it just brings it to more people right um so I think it's crazy he says gonna sell as much as the Wii publicly or that he thinks is going to uh it's fine to have that as an internal goal like I'm sure internally they want Zelda to sell over 10 million they've never had a Zelda game sell 10 million on a single console ever so I think they would love to see 10 million on the Switch which obviously they're not gonna be able to see that until some point next year unless the cells are 20 million units a year which I doubt yeah so you know if it sells 10 million this year well then you're not gonna know final Zelda numbers of it 10 million until next year for Switch but uh plus I think there's an awesome opportunity to have a Zelda bundle and a one two switch bundle this holiday really well you gotta think about it it's launching now at $2.99 with no with no game packed in by then the price of components might have come down enough that they can justify packing in a game that might not have as much sales momentum anymore one two switch makes a lot of sense for the first holiday um but I would also love to see them be like hey there's people who are waiting for Mario they can buy this Zelda bundle yeah and get Mario you know why Mario separate so they're not packaging Mario yeah that's not happening the same reason why they're not packaging Zelda now there's too much money to be made oh yeah um it's awesome as it would sell the system it's selling the system anyway yeah so like it doesn't need to be Zelda doesn't need to be packed in uh one two switch feels like a game they needed to be packed in because I don't know how many people besides maybe myself are gonna buy it yeah I I don't know it but well hopefully I don't have to buy it but uh Nintendo I keep saying I'm gonna say at every podcast till I get it I want my switch and I want my free review copies pander to me I am a whore all right