– Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima
The sky’s the limit for Nintendo on mobile, says president Tatsumi Kimishima. He wants to see 100 to 200 million users for the company’s new My Nintendo membership service, and anticipates the potential for huge profits that exceed the company’s 2000s-era Wii and DS salad days — the apex of its commercial success.
This comes from an interview with Japanese business publication Nikkei, as translated by Kotaku.
Yesterday, Nintendo outlined its mobile plans, revealing its universal Nintendo Account service — which will span PCs, mobile, and game consoles and handhelds — and its My Nintendo service, which is a loyalty program which allows players of its games and apps to earn rewards.
These will come online next year, it seems, alongside the company’s first mobile title — Miitomo, which is due to launch in March 2016.
It’s far from impossible for mobile services to pick up tens of millions of users or even more — but it isn’t necessarily easy, either. Kimishima said that Nintendo made a communication app as its first product to gain users. It came as a surprise to both Nintendo’s fans and the financial markets, which had both broadly been expecting the company to use its wellspring of existing video game IP.
In Kimishima’s presentation, yesterday, he said that Miitomo “will push forward the My Nintendo membership service.” It seems that the twinned app and My Nintendo service are the cornerstone of gaining users for Nintendo’s new service as fast as possible — Kimishima told Nikkei that Miitomo will be localized into eight languages and consequently could be launched in “over 100 countries.”
For more on Miitomo, you can read our analysis of the app.