Nintendo UK keeps evolving

We've got the hardware there now and I think one of the things we've seen in Japan where the growth has come is the release of the content. I mean, Nintendogs was the first one that came and gave us a spike - okay, seasonality as well, but we still haven't actually caught up on Nintendogs and there's still demand out there we haven't supplied. Next one is Brain Training and we've seen the same thing in Japan and as I mentioned with Brain Training it was 13 weeks after launch that it hit its first big spike and then continued to get higher - and those people are new users as well, so very much the content is the thing now.

If I turned around and said to my staff that we're doing something new they'd probably throttle me, because what with this last 12 months of product that we've done and also what we've got in the first quarter...

That's been rumoured, I don't know for how long, but we haven't got any plans at the moment. Nothing I know of.

If you look at other companies... We've got so many products to juggle. One of the things is we always want to make sure we do it properly and do it right, and we'll launch when we're ready and when the product's right, and that's all under control as far as we're concerned.

I think E3 will be the big one to wait for when, and I don't think anyone in the UK is going to get a sneak piece of information on something as important as that [laughs].

Ah well, look, we've got to be honest in the UK, especially. GameCube we can't say is, uh... We're number three and we've got product to release there, but I think what a lot of people don't realise is that GameCube in Europe is probably number two when you add up the other territories, and in Japan it's number two and in fact it's been outselling Xbox 360, so on a global basis GameCube is a very strong business for us as such. Unfortunately the UK market hasn't been our best area, but you know that's why we want to make sure for the future. And I think you'll find that a lot of things we've been doing and the way we've been doing things have been different to what we've done in the past, and not just I suppose in communicating with the media but also to some extent in the way we're dealing with trade. We're doing a lot of things with trade differently than we have in the past, and it's all to sort of make sure for the future that we do a better job.

No I think that's wrong in context, to the extent that we see it as one aspect of the business. We're not deserting the market that we have or those who've supported us over the years. What we're looking at doing is growing and to grow that we need to look in other areas, because that's a finite number of customers that you can have there and we're not going to, as I say, desert or neglect that.

Our ambition is to be number one, so there's a number of different areas for us to do that. We can take them head on or we can move outside as well. We aim to be number one. We're number one in the handheld and there's no reason we can't be number one in the console area? In a number of markets, as I say, Sony dominates, but we're not far behind.

This generation as in GameCube? [Laughs] I don't think we'll catch up with GameCube.

Who knows. Who knows.

I've seen it, but I haven't played it to be honest. We've got one in the office and I've seen it in store. Some of our guys sit and I watch them play it. I was watching, I'm trying to think what the racing game was...

Yeah. It looked nice, but... I won't talk about opposition products.

I mean, you can look on Nintendo with popular games like Mario Kart and a lot of our games which are only on one format and they still sell really well, and a lot of people are probably wishing they were on multiformat. And there's room for that on all of them, and I think looking at the support we're getting from third party, I think it'll most definitely be not only multiformat games but also we know they'll develop exclusive games for Nintendo products as well. So a lot of them have seen the success of DS and the support we've got with them and the number of titles coming through is reflecting that. A few people may have made some wrong bets early on, but it's almost a floodgate coming back as far as support there. And we've got something like 20 titles that'll be launched just with ourselves on DS between now and April, and then you add third party on top of that so there's no dearth of titles.

One of the things we've said before with DS is that it's the start of us being able to provide consumers with a human interface, more opportunity and that's the progression I think we look at there, offering that much better gameplay experience people can have through the console or through the hand control, whatever it may be, making it simpler and easier while not neglecting the opportunities for complexity as well. But we can make it simple for people.