Exclusive: Nintendo Europe Boss on All Things Wii

Who'd be head of sales and marketing at Nintendo Europe? Everyone makes fun of you all the time and gossips that you're scared of a faceless Japanese man employed only to ensure you don't steal Nintendo's money and buy milk and potatoes with it. Or something...

NOE has shuffled around quite a lot at its upper echelon in recent years, with David Gosen making way for a revised structure which saw Jim Merrick take a less powerful role heading up country-specific general managers. When Merrick was forced to leave Nintendo (due to a financially-driven relocation that seemingly went a touch sour) a new face, Laurent Fischer, entered the fray.

And what a face. Imagine George Clooney, only French. He's the kind of man you'd be really annoyed to introduce your wife to, the kind of man who, if you HAD to do it with then... Well, you get the drift.

Smooth as cream Laurent Fischer shares his thoughts and media-trained, pre-prepared answers on all things Wii in this exclusive SPOnG interview.


SPOnG: The first thing we wanted to ask you was... David Gosen's style was robotic. Jim Merrick was grumpy all the time. What's your style going to be?

Laurent Fischer:... My style is, I am nothing. Everything is the game, everything is Nintendo. I am here to explain what the developers behind our games want to do and try to get caught up being hands-on with things. But really, everything is related to games, I am really nothing. That's my plan. I'm very humble.

SPOnG: Before E3 this year, it's easy to forget that Nintendo was very nervous. It hosted a conference which, in SPOnG's opinion, lacked confidence. How do you think E3 2006 changed Nintendo's internal thinking towards the Wii console?

Laurent Fischer: Well, I don't think there was any anxiety particularly and we are not in an area in which are are not confident. For years and years, what we've said is, people who enjoy videogames can enjoy other things in their leisure, and if our industry is not able to provide them with new, intuitive experiences, they will just get out and the market will shrink. The idea [for Wii] has been developed for years now and is exactly the same as for the DS. We didn't want to jump into the same gaming space again. We wanted to provide a new way to play and not caring about the usual trick of providing more graphics and more power. We wanted to deliver to gamers who have been playing for years some fresh air. And at the same time we wanted to go somewhere else, build a bridge with people who haven't even considered playing games. We've seen tremendous growth [with the latter group of non-gamers] and we've been selling hundreds of thousands of DS units every week. Brain Training, Big Brain Academy... Games that have attracted a different audience in Japan have attracted core gamers in Europe, such as Animal Crossing, which I love. Animal Crossing has seen a coming together of core gamers and non-gamers coming across from Nintendogs, which was the first videogame some users had ever bought.

This shows clearly that the strategy for the DS is working in a tremendous way, and we are not doing something different with Wii. We are going in the same direction and we were very confident from the beginning that it is the right strategy. The thing is, it's always more difficult to have something sailing against the wind when you show it to the public. On top of that, it's very difficult to translate playing the Wii into words. You really have to pick up the controller and play it. Then everything becomes clear.

SPOnG: Do you think Nintendo has stolen the show during 2006 thus far?

Laurent Fischer: People are curious about what we are going to deliver on Wii. And people need to have their hands on the controller. They stood in line for hours at E3 and I stood with them. What I saw was smiles. And I saw fun. Everyone was astonished by how easy it is to pick up, how easy it is to play and what kids we all were with the controller in our hands!

SPOnG: Why have you kept the price and release date secret for the Wii? It seems like a mistake to us...

Laurent Fischer: Nintendo is always working in the same way. E3 was the first time we had demonstrated anything to the public on Wii. What we offered was an invitation to come, play, understand and share our joy to play. People are already willing to come down a very new road with us. Price doesn't matter at the moment. Other stuff doesn't matter at the moment. It's something we'll announce later on. It's going to be an affordable price, and every time we've made a promise using the word affordable, we've kept it and we will do when we finally announce the price. It's going to be later on...

SPOnG: We think that there were two strategies for Wii price announcement during E3, much of which depended on Sony. We believe that the price would have been announced, but when the PlayStation 3 was priced, Nintendo being such a profit-focused company saw the possibility to extend its price boundaries for potential pricing.

Laurent Fischer: We... at Nintendo... we are not working in this competition area. My feeling when I saw the conferences of Microsoft and Sony, was I saw one block which is providing one kind of way to go for the videogames, the next-gen thing related only to graphics and power. And for a year now, we've been saying something else, that we're talking not about next-generation but new generation. The price has always bee the last thing to be announced so we don't care about other price announcements and launch dates. We need to deliver Wii the proper way. What is the proper way for Nintendo? It is to have software, to give the consumer and player what we promise them and we have to have the quantity necessary to fulfil all their needs. We are not launching something people cannot get their hands on. Once we know when we are able to combine all these things, we are going to do it. We announced launch in 2006 and it's fine, I'm very with that.

SPOnG: Answer this question: Will Europe see retail release in 2006?

Laurent Fischer: The announcement has been made. Wii will launch in 2006.

SPOnG: But yes or no for Europe. It's important.

Laurent Fischer: To me that means, by the end of 2006, all the various countries will have Wii released. I can give you no other, more precise information.

SPOnG: So Europeans can be confident they'll see it on their shelves before the end of this year?

Laurent Fischer: Yeah, should be, should be.

SPOnG: Yeah?

Laurent Fischer: But to me this is not the big reason for fuss. To me the big reason for fuss is to combine all the things I mentioned, then we will work on the launch date and the price and then everyone will understand what the Wii means, what our new way to play is and then everybody will be happy when it comes and that is the most important thing.

[Since this interview was conducted, SPOnG has been led to believe that Nintendo's launch position in Europe is much stronger, though at time of press no confirmed release date or pricing has been disclosed for any region.]

SPOnG: When did you hear the name Wii for the Revolution for the first time?

Laurent Fischer: I heard it for the first time a few days before the final announcement.

SPOnG: Okay. Tell us honestly what the reaction was to the name in your office

Laurent Fischer: I was not in my office... My reaction was, I loved it. Because Wii/Oui means 'yes' in French, and I'm French!

SPOnG: Of course. But that's a very easy way out of answering the question and we predicted you'd say that before we asked it!

Laurent Fischer: So you're asking questions to which you already know the answer? Wii is a revolutionary name and now that we've been able to play, everyone is saying Wii and enjoying Wii and Wii means the new way to play and nothing else, nothing more. Revolution was always a codename. We always talk about coming back to the developers, the game creators. They thought that Wii is very easy to remember name, very catchy and it makes you smile when you say Wii. It means you and me. It's exactly what we want to deliver with this console and this controller. So let's go for it!