Films, derivative products or amusement parks: the very conservative Nintendo, Japanese pioneer of video games, has long confined its Mario or Zelda stars to consoles, but has been making a slow strategic shift in recent years to reach a wider audience.
“There is a limit to the number of people in the world that a game console can reach,” Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Mario, admitted in June at a Nintendo shareholder meeting.
The presentation on Tuesday of a new universe dedicated to the gorilla Donkey Kong at the Universal Studios park in Osaka (western Japan) which will open on December 11, in addition to Nintendo zones in the United States, follows the opening of a company history museum last month in Japan.
Nintendo also invaded cinemas with Super Mario Bros.on the global box office podium in 2023, of which a sequel is in preparation for 2026. A film from the Zelda universe has also been announced.
“For ten years there has really been a 180-degree turn” in the manufacturer’s strategy, “rather beneficial,” judges Florent Gorges, publisher and author of books on the history of Nintendo.
According to him, Nintendo’s historical reluctance to exploit its licenses was partly explained by the “conservatism” of the company based in the former capital of Kyoto, “relatively hermetic”.
“There was this culture of secrecy pushed to the extreme at Nintendo, very feverish about new things.”
Mascot Horror
Furthermore, former president Hiroshi Yamauchi — who led the company for more than half a century (1949-2002) — “hated mascots, for some reason.”
Nintendo was also, according to Florent Gorges, “considerably burned in the early 1990s after having entrusted its Mario license to Hollywood”, for a film which was almost unanimously against it.
The beginnings of its strategic shift date back to the early 2000s, when the firm questioned itself after the disappointing sales of two of its consoles, the Nintendo 64 and the GameCube.
The president of Nintendo at the time, Satoru Iwata, then announced an action plan: it was necessary to “expand the population of players” by giving the video game virus to individuals who had never held a controller.
The following two consoles, tailor-made to interest non-gamers, were among Nintendo’s biggest commercial successes: the DS, a two-screen portable machine and the Wii, controlled using a remote control, each sold at more than 100 million copies.
After the commercial failure of the following consoles, the 3DS and especially the Wii U, Satoru Iwata amended his strategy: it will now be a matter of making the brand’s characters better known to the whole world, beyond their video game adventures.
Nintendo, which until then did not have “the know-how of physical products”, is starting to “sell soft toys and sweets, allowing its characters to be present in the daily lives of consumers”, underlines Hideki Yasuda, analyst from Toyo Securities.
“We saw Nintendo products flooding into supermarkets, whereas before you had to get up early to find goodies », Slips Florent Gorges.
“Talent agency”
By attempting to “place” its heroes in all-out products and productions, Nintendo now sees itself as a true “talent agency” for its characters, Shigeru Miyamoto has emphasized in several interviews.
Sometimes compared to Disney, Nintendo, however, has a distinct model from the American giant, which multiplies the acquisitions of franchises to develop them internally, explains analyst Kensaku Namera of Nomura Securities.
The Japanese company, on the one hand, remains above all a gaming company, whose sales of Switch consoles and games represent more than 90% of turnover.
And for other media, he “focuses on what he can do himself” and collaborates with other players, such as Universal Studios for Mario attractions, and external studios and directors for films.
Nintendo would rather seek inspiration from another globally successful Japanese franchise, born from a video game: “Pokémon”, a license for which it once managed the rights and which “really pushed Nintendo to further exploit its franchises,” Mr. Namera told AFP.
“Many children love Pikachu and buy stuffed animals even if they don’t play video games,” he adds.
So, “exposing them to characters like Mario or Yoshi will perhaps serve as a trigger” to attract them to consoles.
