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Nintendo President on the importance of Miitomo and better explaining it to the public
The following comes from a Time interview with Nintendo President,
On the importance of Miitomo and better explaining it to the public...
“We believe [Miitomo] is something that’s going to get people wanting to, through the use of these very well known Mii characters, speak and communicate with their friends and when they’re using Miitomo it’s going to be easier to do some of the Miitomo features if you have a Nintendo Account. It’ll be easier to reach out and talk to your friends. Once you have that account set up I think it’s a very easy transition for folks to want to then register for My Nintendo so they can start earning points.
So they’ll start earning points not only by using their software, but by interacting with our stuff, not just by purchasing software, but by interacting both at theme parks and also with merchandize. So something that’s again simple and easy for the consumer to accomplish. And then and only then, once we’ve established these roads by which consumers can reach our content on smart devices, then that’ll be the right timing for us to bring more of our Nintendo IP to that business.
First of all, I think you’re right, I don’t think we have been able to successfully communicate what we’re trying to do at this point,” he says, responding to a question about whether he thinks Western consumers will “get” Miitomo when it launches. “As you said, I think normally if you look at the smart device business, applications are not advertised, they’re not promoted, you just open up the app store and boom, there’s a whole bunch of new apps. It’s just like, ‘Here they are!’, and they’re delivered to you. Taking time and money and effort to create large commercials around smart device applications has not been part of this business traditionally.
I do believe that we need and want to do exactly that, though, which is why we previously announced that we’d delay the launch of Miitomo until March of next year. From now until that time we’re going to be thinking about what we’ll do to promote this application, and what we can do to make sure that it is understood by our prospective consumers."