The 81st Annual General Meeting of Shareholders – Q&A!

It is that time of year again when Nintendo’s top individuals have to face the fire of the shareholders. This year, at the 81st Annual General Meeting of Shareholders, Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa and Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto had a very interesting Q&A session that went over a lot of Nintendo’s vision for the future. A lot of the information shared was also part of their CRS Report 2021, which we covered a week ago.

We will include inserts from the interview here, but if you are interested in the full Q&A session from the 81st Annual General Meeting of Shareholders, please click here.

During Nintendo’s 81st Annual General Meeting of Shareholders, president Shuntaro Furukawa and representative director/fellow Shigeru Miyamoto both weighed in on what Chris Meledandri from Illumination brings to the Nintendo table.

Furukawa: Chris Meledandri is the founder of Illumination Entertainment and has experience as a producer who created numerous films including the Despicable Me franchise, which introduced the Minions. He has gained broad experience and insight as a corporate manager and in the field of entertainment, so we anticipate he will appropriately supervise our management from an objective perspective while providing valuable advice to our leadership. Mr. Meledandri has been appointed as an independent and non-executive outside director, so he will not be directly involved in execution of operation. However, we believe that his extensive experience and knowledge in the field of entertainment will have a beneficial effect on the decision-making of our board of directors.

With regard to the visual content expansion, we are working on the Super Mario movie and have announced that other projects are also in progress. As you pointed out, our core business is the integrated hardware-software dedicated video game platform business. But to keep that business thriving and growing, we need to create opportunities where even people who do not normally play on video game systems can come into contact with Nintendo characters. As part of this effort, visual content could be important for us. Now let’s hear what Mr. Miyamoto can add to this.

Miyamoto: Although this has no direct tie with his appointment as a director, I’ve been working with Chris for over five years now on the Super Mario movie. Through that relationship I think he really came to understand the Nintendo point of view. I don’t think it’s easy for those overseas involved in media creation to understand Nintendo’s way of thinking, but Chris truly comprehends why Nintendo creates characters and visual content.

We are working on mobile and visual content in order to expand our integrated hardware-software entertainment business globally. Working on mobile content reminded us again that while the Nintendo game systems may have reached some parts of the world, there are many places where they are not widespread. We started the mobile business because we felt it very important to conduct activities that encourage people to understand the Nintendo brand and come to like Nintendo. That resulted in also realizing the importance of visual content. By possessing video content and not just games, Nintendo will be able to expand its content further throughout the world and become stronger as a company. The fact that we are a video game developing company tends to create the mistaken impression that we can also create movies easily. It’s true that the processes of making visual content and developing games share some of the same ways of thinking, but there are also differences. The movie business, including distribution, is in a period of transformation. Against this backdrop, we think that asking for Chris’s input, as an expert with many years of experience in Hollywood, will be of great help to us in the future.

Furukawa & Miyamoto, The 81st Annual General Meeting of Shareholders

During the 81st Annual General Meeting of Shareholders, one investor brought up media reports that say the company’s games don’t appear to fully take gender into account, so President Shuntaro Furukawa responded, mentioning how Nintendo feels “that diversity, including gender diversity, is very important.” He added that in terms of features for a particular game, “we must make decisions by taking into consideration a wide variety of factors, and we may not always be able to meet every request.”

“We believe that diversity, including gender diversity, is very important. As a company providing entertainment, our goal is to put smiles on the faces of everyone connected to Nintendo, and we undertake our development with that goal in mind. Specifically regarding the features of each game, we must make decisions by taking into consideration a wide variety of factors, and we may not always be able to meet every request. However, we take this as valuable feedback.”

Furukawa, The 81st Annual General Meeting of Shareholders

Nintendo and eSports tend to come up in conversation quite often. Although the company hosts tournaments from time to time, it has never fully embraced the competitive scene or supported anything outside of its own dealings.

President Shuntaro Furukawa was asked about Nintendo’s plans for eSports moving forward. He did acknowledge that competition can help to “share the gameplay experience with a broader audience” while also continuing to generate interest for games/characters. More tournaments will be held in the future, but there’s currently no word on specifics.

We believe that formats like e-sports where players compete against each other in front of many people are a way to share the gameplay experience with a broader audience. Nintendo has a history of holding game tournaments, and while this was before the pandemic, we held the final stage of the national elementary school Smash Bros. tournament and the Splatoon Koshien 2020 Kinki Regional Tournament during the Nintendo Live 2019 event in Kyoto in October 2019. We felt those tournaments were well-received, not only by the audiences onsite, but also those watching online.

Game tournaments can motivate people who own the game to keep playing and they can generate interest in Nintendo games and characters in people who do not own the game. We will continue to hold game tournaments and other such events going forward by carefully monitoring the situation surrounding the pandemic.

Furukawa, The 81st Annual General Meeting of Shareholders

Nintendo Switch Online has been going for three years now. We’ve seen the introduction of classic games on the console, new titles like Tetris 99 and Pacman 99, and opportunities to try out certain titles through Game Trials.

The SNES library started up on Switch Online in 2019. Since then though, the lineup of classics has been a bit static. Some have hoped that Nintendo could expand the offerings with N64 or Game Boy games, so of course President Shuntaro Furukawa was asked about a membership option at a higher price tier with upgraded services during Nintendo’s Annual General Meeting of Shareholders last week. He spoke more broadly about plans, noting how the company is “working on increasing the appeal” of Switch Online “to make it even more fun and convenient to play” with Switch.

“Nintendo started the Nintendo Switch Online service in September 2018 for Nintendo Switch users. People with memberships can play games with their friends online, such as titles like Animal Crossing: New Horizons. In addition, they can play some of the games that were released for the NES and the SNES. Membership in this service exceeded 26 million paying accounts in September of last year and is still growing steadily, in step with the increase in Nintendo Switch system sales. For Nintendo Switch Online, it’s important not only to increase the number of new members, but also to encourage existing members to continue using the service, so we are working on increasing the appeal of the service to make it even more fun and convenient to play with Nintendo Switch.”

Furukawa, The 81st Annual General Meeting of Shareholders

Finally, the topic of a new Switch model came out during the meeting, and President Shuntaro Furukawa was asked about these reports, to which he stated:

“We use Nintendo Direct to communicate information about individual products to our consumers at the appropriate times. Going forward, Nintendo will continue to focus on offering our unique and original brand of play, leveraging the integrated hardware-software dedicated video game platform to provide fun and grow our business. To this end, we are constantly working on development of hardware, software, and accessories, but I cannot comment on specific products that are under development.”

Furukawa, The 81st Annual General Meeting of Shareholders

There were so many things discussed, including the two’s favorite titles, thoughts on Ring Fit Adventure, and some more insight on how COVID-19 affected Nintendo.

If you would like to read the whole Q&A session from the 81st Annual General Meeting of Shareholders, please click here.

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Thank you for stopping by Nintendo Link for all of your gaming news and updates. What did you think of this shareholder meeting from last week? Did you find any of it insightful? Let us know in the comments below! Happy gaming, everyone.