In continuing the discussion about the company’s desire to “actively expand” their character licensing business, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has shared that we will see the results of such initiative “within a year” although they won’t “approve every single request.”
“Although I mentioned that we would work flexibly without considering past exceptions when it comes to our character IP licensing business, I am not saying that we will approve every single request,” Iwata clarified.
“For example, we will judge, based on our own criteria, if that licensed product really leads to consumers’ smiles in the medium to long-term, and if it is in direct competition with our core business. It is true that any company in the entertainment industry is, in a sense, competing for consumers’ attention, but I was not referring to that type of competition. What I meant was the kind of competition that directly threatens, for example, our integrated hardware-software business, and we will of course not license any products that, as a result of using Nintendo game characters, damage their public image.
“I believe companies around the world that own a variety of character IP have ideas of their own about their licensing businesses, and I think our licensing business would not be greatly different from them. In that sense, within a year, we will probably embark on various types of businesses that we didn’t conduct in the past, and actually there are projects we have already started working on with our clients, so please look forward to them.”
We’ll see Nintendo’s expanded character licensing emerge this year
