Reggie Fils-Aimé explains why Zelda wasn’t shown at E3, production increase for amiibo

The Legend of Zelda for Wii U

In an interview with IGN, Reggie Fils-Aimé (President and COO of Nintendo of America) explained why the latest enty in the Zelda series, for the Wii U, wasn’t shown at E3 this year. The main reason for not showing it is because Nintendo doesn’t see E3 as a place to show content that won’t come out within the next few month or so.

Usually, the company prefers to show games that will come out in the upcoming holiday period, and as far as the first half of the following year. Of course, it’s a case-by-case decision, with some exceptions sometimes. For The Legend of Zelda on Wii U, Nintendo really believed the game would come out in 2015, which is why it was shown at E3 last year.

But does not showing the game at E3 this year means the game won’t come out in 2016? That’s not the case, according to Reggie Fils-Aimé, who mentions Shigeru Miyamoto and his insistance that the game is a 2016 title, and for the Wii U.

Another reason they didn’t show The Legenf of Zelda Wii U at E3 is because they didn’t want to frustrate fans. It’s true that they might have impressed people, and avoid the tepid reception for their Digital Event, but it wouldn’t have changed the fact that the game wasn’t going to show up before 2016.

For Satoru Iwata, Shigeru Miyamoto, Tatsuya Eguchi, Shinya Takahashi and Reggie Fils-Aimé, showing a game that won’t come out within the next 6-8 months would have had a negative effect, that would have outweight the pros.

Source: IGN

amiibo

Ever since their launch, back in November, amiibo have been really popular, and finding them in stores is more often than not a real adventure. In fact, Reggie Fils-Aimé himself said he was shocked by how many amiibo people were buying. During the first month, over a million figure were sold in the US alone.

And Nintendo is quite aware of their popularity, and has had to increase production dramatically over the past few weeks/months. Here’s what Reggie Fils-Aimé has to say about that:

“We’re at a point where we have to take our volume estimates and double them or triple them based on the levels of demand we’re seeing. We’re working very hard to meet that demand.”

In fact, Nintendo has been working with its suppliers to increase production, but it never seems to be enough: consumer demand still outpaces supplies to this very day (especially for the figure based on less popular characters).

Source: CNET