Nintendo jumps on toy figure trend to boost Wii U

SAN FRANCISCO - Nintendo on Tuesday said it is adding real-world game figures to Wii U play to boost the popularity of its console, which has lagged rivals in the market.

Nintendo is blending Will U virtual play with tangible toys as it faces off against powerhouse offerings from Xbox One and PlayStation 4 at an E3 gathering here.

The Japanese video game stalwart is jumping on a trend that has paid off for publisher Activision with "Skylanders" and for Disney Interactive with "Infinity" play launched last year with characters from Pixar film "The Incredibles."

"It's been very successful," Disney Infinity senior producer Sean Patton said as he showed off new 'Marvel Super Heroes' interactive game pieces due for release later this year.

Game pieces give players toys then can hold, collect, and taken with them in ways that extend on-screen fun into the real-world, Patton noted while discussing their appeal.

Those being play at the Disney booth on the E3 show floor included Hulk, Iron Man, and Spider Man. Versions of Disney Infinity are tailored for all major consoles.

Toys To Life
Activision pioneered the "Toys-To-Life" category in 2011 with the introduction of "Spyro's Adventure" in a shrewd move bridging virtual worlds and real life when it comes to video games.

Skylanders has become a $2 billion franchise, according to Activision.

"We shook up the kids game industry, and it was a phenomenal success," said Paul Reiche, co-founder of Toys for Bob studio that created 'Skylanders.'

"People grow up thinking their toys are alive; we just want to make that true."

Actually handling toys and sharing in-game experiences with them has resonated with players young and old, according to Reiche.

While the prime demographic for "Skylanders" is pre-teen boys, there was a lengthy queue waiting to demo a coming "Trap Team" version of the game at E3 where children are not allowed.

"Connecting imagination through physical objects into the game world is the magic recipe," Reiche told AFP.

"Why shouldn't our toys follow us into the virtual world where we spend most of our time?"

Skylanders figures work with all of the competing console systems, with the help of an accessory platform that relays digital information to and from toys to game software.

Nintendo is turning to beloved franchises "Mario" for its dive into interactive toys, and to further distinguish itself from more muscular Xbox and PlayStation consoles known for immersive, realistic blockbuster action games.

"Nintendo is more light-hearted," said 19-year-old Marco Garcia, who sat in the shade outside the E3 venue dressed like the Mario Brothers character "Luigi," complete with green cap and stick-on black moustache.

Nearby, a queue stretched along the street outside the Nokia Theater where a Nintendo-sponsored "Mario Smash Brothers" game tournament was hours from starting.

"Nintendo has a lot of games coming," the California teenager said. "I think it will be enough to give the Wii U a good kick."

Super Smash Brothers

Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime said "amiibo" game pieces embedded with computer chips to swap data with Wii U GamePad controllers will debut in a "Mario Smash Brothers" game later this year.

Amiibo characters are heading to a variety of games, including "Mario Kart," according to Nintendo.

Nintendo will also be letting players put themselves into games as animated "mii" characters, virtually doing battle with some classic characters from the Japan-based video game company.

"We are not simply throwing miis into the fray," Fils-Aime said. "We've done some serious work getting them ready for the fight."

Nintendo played to fans of beloved franchises such as "Mario" and "Legend of Zelda" during a media briefing streamed online prior to the opening of the show floor at the E3 video game extravaganza here.

It is the second year in a row that Nintendo decided to forgo a grand, live presentation to vie for the spotlight at what is considered the industry's premier event.

Nintendo's Wii U, launched in late 2012, has lost some of its luster to the new-generation PlayStation 4 from Sony and Xbox one from Microsoft, both released last year.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Mobile games leave Super Mario lagging

TOKYO -- There was a time when wherever Super Mario Brothers went, the gaming world followed, but an industry that has moved on in leaps and bounds since then just shrugged at the latest re-set by Nintendo on Thursday.

A vague plan to reboot a business hammered by disastrous Wii U console sales, including possibly cutting the chains that bind their popular characters to Nintendo's own devices by loosening its licensing policy, left analysts and gamers leery about the Japanese giant's prospects.

The maker of the Donkey Kong and Super Mario franchises has fallen on hard times in recent years, piling up losses as rivals Sony and Microsoft outpaced it in console sales, while all three companies fight off a trend toward cheap -- or sometimes free -- downloadable games for smartphones and other mobile devices.

"Smartphone games are really getting popular and whatever Nintendo does, people are using fewer consoles," said Hidekazu Kurihara, a 31-year-old Nintendo devotee browsing in a retro shop in Tokyo's electronics wonderland of Akihabara.

The shop sells all things Nintendo from years past, from the consoles that flung the company onto the global stage to the games whose characters became household names in the 1980s and 1990s.

"I really don't know what they should do," he said as another customer played Mario Kart on the 1990 Super Nintendo (SNES), under the watchful gaze of an oversized Super Mario, the mustachioed plumber who starred in the franchise.

Nintendo's stock price on Thursday swung wildly as investors reacted to comments by the company's president.

After soaring by about seven percent as the Tokyo Stock Exchange opened, players jumped on the stock after a buyback was announced and it finished the day a bedraggled 4.3 percent below where it started, at 12,325 yen ($120).

Hyper-competitive digital games

Investors were less than impressed with Nintendo's insistence on sticking with its console-centric business despite slumping sales -- and calls to ride the mobile wave.

President Satoru Iwata told a Tokyo analyst conference that the "business integrating hardware and software is our strength", adding that the Kyoto-based firm was too small to make a splash in the hyper-competitive digital games sector.

Nintendo would, however, look at loosening its licensing policy to promote some of its beloved characters on smartphones and other mobile devices, he said.

"In the past we were negative about (the) licensing business. But we'll change this policy and be proactive including looking for a possible business partner," Iwata said.

For gamer Nobuo Kaneko, who was browsing in Akihabara, the problem with Nintendo is a lack of choice.

While a less sophisticated audience of a few decades ago might have put up with narrow choice and stuck with one console, gamers are more eclectic now, and the explosion in opportunities, including online, has made them much less monogamous.

"They don't really have games from other makers, only Nintendo games," said Kaneko, a 35-year-old Tokyo resident.

The firm's vague new strategy comes a day after it announced a share buyback plan and Iwata agreed to cut his salary in half for five months to atone for a dive in earnings.

That came on the heels of a shock announcement this month that Nintendo would slip back into the red.

Poor holiday demand for the Wii U and its high-margin software meant console sales for the current fiscal year to March would come in at 2.8 million units, Nintendo said -- less than one-third of the firm's forecast.

By contrast Sony, which also has an online gaming subscription service, sold more than 4.2 million PlayStation 4 consoles by the start of this year, less than two months after its release. The Wii U has been on sale for over a year.

"The market had expected something new related to the smartphone business, but the results just disappointed," said Kenzaburo Suwa, strategist at Okasan Securities.

No 'magic bullet'

Serkan Toto, a Tokyo-based games consultant, questioned the frequent calls for Nintendo to move away from its console-based business -- as bitter rival Sega did about a decade ago -- and dive into the mobile gaming realm.

"By putting their games on smartphones ... I think that would ultimately kill Nintendo," he told AFP.

After a slow start, the firm has seen better sales of its 3DS -- the world's first 3D videogame system that works without special glasses -- and the original Wii with its motion-sensor controls was an unqualified winner.

"The point about Nintendo, why this company is so strong, apart from their existing intellectual property and brand appeal ... is their ability to innovate," Toto said.

"Nintendo needs something like (the original Wii)..But I don't think there is one magic bullet, one way that Nintendo can miraculously cure itself ... It will be a very difficult path going forward."

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Can Nintendo recover from Wii U flop?

TOKYO - Nintendo Co Ltd, facing a third year of losses, is getting lots of unsolicited advice on how to squeeze more out of its Mario franchise and revive its fortunes after admitting that its Wii U game console has been a flop.

The company has given few clues on its new management strategy, due to be announced on Thursday. One thing, however, is certain - it will have to burn through a lot of its cash pile in the years it takes to try again with the Wii U's successor.

The Nintendo that emerges could well be a more efficient company - better at marketing its beloved characters, but still wedded to its basic strategy of making hardware as the vehicle for software developed in-house.

Most analysts do not expect a bolder change of direction, such as making its back catalogue available via an online subscription service or allowing its games to be played on smartphones - despite some saying they are the future of gaming.

The Kyoto-based company has been slow to move online, falling behind Microsoft Corp and Sony Corp, which will launch a cloud-based streaming service this summer enabling users to play the same game across numerous platforms.

Taking Mario to the cloud would be a big step for conservative Nintendo.

"Online is big and Nintendo is notorious for not having a great online system," said Jean Snow, a Tokyo-based gaming expert.

The company faces no imminent existential danger. With 850 billion yen ($8.3 billion) in cash and its own shares at the end of last September it can survive a few years of losses.

That cash pile was amassed from past hits such as the first Wii - evidence, say some, that a company with its history of booms and busts has the ability to turn things around once more.

"Nintendo is a special thing, because of its history, so many gamers have a soft spot for Nintendo... they just shot themselves in the foot with this piece of hardware, the Wii U," said Snow. "But I totally think they can get out."

WII U FAILURE

The failure of the Wii U - whose annual sales forecast was slashed by 70 percent earlier this month - leaves Nintendo as the loser of the pack now led by Sony and Microsoft.

Analysts say the Wii U foundered because too few games were released for the console, with development issues leading to a delay of more than six months between the games released at the launch in November 2012 and the next batch of titles.

"There's no software that is made especially for the Wii U. If there were fun games that you couldn't play on anything else then that would be something to talk about," said Eiji Maeda, an analyst at SMBC Nikko.

It was the sports and fitness games introduced with Nintendo's previous console, the Wii, that made it a runaway hit as their use of the console's unique motion sensor controllers drew in families and video games newbies.

But those casual gamers have been unconvinced of the need to upgrade to a console whose name and concept seems so close to its predecessor, while core gamers hanker for the more adult games, higher processing power and connectivity offered by Sony's Playstation 4 and Microsoft's Xbox One.

Although Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata said that sales of the Wii U would pick up as more titles are released, there are few cases of a console becoming a hit after a slow start. Third party developers are also less likely to want to make games for a failing console.

Nintendo has survived misses amid its hits before. It weathered the blow to the games industry from the collapse of rival Atari, scoring a hit with its Nintendo Entertainment System, and later won a battle for dominance against Sega.

Nintendo's Gamecube console, released in 2001, stumbled against Sony's PlayStation 2 and Microsoft's Xbox. The Wii was initially derided for lacking the high-definition graphics of its rivals' next-generation consoles. It went on to outsell the Xbox 360, with more than 100 million sold by September 2013.

NEXT LEVEL

Nintendo budgeted a record 70 billion yen ($684 million) for research and development this year, as increasingly sophisticated graphics and functions has pushed the average cost of making a game to around 2-3 billion yen.

But with the company falling short of a 100 billion yen operating profit target set last year, Thursday's announcement is likely to focus on cost cuts. Nintendo will report its third-quarter results on Wednesday.

"The increase in the cost of game development is one of the reasons why Nintendo hasn't put out (enough new) software," said Hideki Yasuda, an analyst at Ace Securities.

Nintendo has already moved to reduce costs by merging its portable and home game console departments last year.

Some investors doubt the move will be drastic enough, with some clamouring for Nintendo to license its games out to other companies and to make a mobile version for Apple's iOS and Google Inc's Android smartphone platforms.

But the robust sales of the Playstation 4 and Xbox One suggests the threat of smartphones to home game consoles has been overplayed, while Nintendo has long resisted going mobile, saying it would hurt the inherent value of its characters.

Instead, Nintendo could better exploit that value by expanding its franchises for characters such as Mario and Zelda as it did with Pokemon, which was spun into a successful cartoon series, movie and toys and is now owned by an affiliate.

"They could diversify their revenue streams... rather than licensing Mario to another game company it would be better to make a movie or a TV series," said Yasuda of Ace Securities. "Bandai Namco has found great success doing that with Gundam and Kamen Rider."

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com