Reggie Fils-Aime Talks Skyward Sword
Posted on November 30 2011 by Mases Hagopian
In a recent interview with Time Techland, Reggie Fils-Aime talked a bit about Nintendo’s future and answered a number of Zelda related questions. First and foremost he opened with Skyward Sword, stating that it opened up as the fastest selling Zelda game ever. He would go on to make comparisons to Twilight Princess, sales numbers for older Zelda titles, digital content, and other non-Zelda information. You can see part of the interview below, but make the jump to see all the relevant Zelda questions.
Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword has had a tremendously positive impact on our Wii business. First, the game itself is spectacular. It’s getting perfect scores in the U.S., Europe and Japan. It’s a deep game. People are sayings it’s between 50 and 75 hours of gameplay.
As for its effect on our Wii business, Skyward Sword on its first day became the fastest selling Zelda game we’ve ever had. It launched last week. Our Wii business also had the benefit of Black Friday, but in total for the same week, we sold over 500,000 units of Wii.
Why do you think the game sold so many more copies than Twilight Princess, especially when you consider people might be holding off until Wii U comes out next year?
First, at this point in time there are more than 37 million units of Wii in the U.S., which is a huge install base to sell into. Twilight Princess was a launch title, a very effective launch title, but still a launch title. At this point in the Wii’s life cycle, you’ve got new consumers just looking to get into the franchise and they’re looking for that one great game to play or one great game to gift and Skyward Sword fits that bill.
The real benefit we have with Skyward Sword coming out now is that we have all these new consumers who are jumping into Wii, so now they can enjoy all of the other great games—Mario Kart Wii, Wii Sports, Wii Fit Plus—so for us strategically it was really important to release the game this holiday season.
When games like Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword come out for Wii, does it push sales for other games in the franchise as well?
It pushes virtual console content, it pushes games on the 3DS eShop that are Zelda related. Zelda is kind of special in that it’s the 25th Anniversary of Zelda, so we’ve done a lot of promotional activity around all Zelda content. When the Mario Kart game, for example, comes out, it’ll drive a lot of Mario content in our digital shops.
Source: Time Techland
