David Rosenthal: uncertainty

Transcript context

…Right. The revenue per user on that is through the roof, but it's a much smaller audience. I wanted to paint this picture to try to help us understand where Nintendo decides to start playing from here. They've typically been a mid-core company with their titles. You think of the Zelda, the Super Mario, Odyssey. With some casual games, you think about Super Smash Brothers or Mario Kart, your button mashers, those games lean more casual. What they did with the Wii, which in some ways was shooting themselves in the foot—and David, you can push back on this if you disagree—is that they started walking away from their mid-core characters that really defined who Nintendo is and launched a casual gaming home console. The thing that was a hit for the Wii was Wii Sports. It's these lifestyle games. The things that I don't even ever remember playing on the Wii are Mario and Zelda. That's not what that platform was for. Yes. I would agree with exactly how you characterize that. I also agree that by doing this Nintendo shot themselves in the foot, but I don't know that you can blame them necessarily. I think it actually was completely brilliant at the time. It completely revitalizes the company. With the Wii and its success, Nintendo's revenue almost quadrupled from the $5 billion-ish range to just under $20 billion in 2009. All time high, even to date. Even including all the Switch success, that was still the all time high.…

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