Nintendo Discusses Revolution At UBS Conference

Nintendo chief marketing officer Reggie Fils-Aime was one of the presenters at the 33rd Annual UBS Global Media Conference, which features addresses by senior executives in media companies to an audience of investors and analysts. In his speech, for which slides have been made available online, Fils-Aime discussed Nintendo's strategy of marketing to more casual gamers or non-gamers, an approach which includes the company's next-generation Revolution system. Company president Satoru Iwata was quoted in the presentation as saying "If we cannot expand the market, all we can do is wait for the industry to slowly die." Nintendo highlighted its efforts at expansion by citing the strong sales of Nintendogs, its virtual pet simulator for the Nintendo DS. According to Fils-Aime's statistics, the game has sold just shy of a million copies in the US alone, and twice as many female players as usual purchased the game. The presentation also included supportive quotes from various third-party software developers on their plans for the Revolution. A particular highlight for Nintendo was the remarks from industry giant Electronic Arts, which commented: "It's a brilliant controller, and as usual we can credit Nintendo with being innovative and neat and fresh and fun. They continue to pioneer in our industry…they make some of the best games in the industry…and we look forward to partnering with them." Other information given during the presentation was a breakdown of sales for the Nintendo DS vs. Sony's PlayStation Portable through October 2005. According to Nintendo, the DS is outselling the PSP in both Japan and the U.S., with total sales of the systems reaching around 6 million for DS, versus 4.26 million for the PSP.