Getting ready for Nintendo’s investor relations meeting

Some time ago, word got out that Nintendo might announce or mention the Wii’s successor in some capacity in their next investor relations meeting. For the uninitiated, Nintendo holds one of these meetings every quarter of their fiscal year for their investors. The idea of these meetings is to, well, convince investors that Nintendo is a company worth pouring money into. Many of these meetings go by with little more than graph after graph of sales data being shown, but they have been known to produce newsworthy announcements for gamers, too – most recently, the new Kirby and Rhythm Heaven titles for the Wii.

Their next meeting, which is due to begin in about 24 hours, is expected to be a particularly special one. One of the first solid rumours we got about the Wii 2 claimed that we’d get a “pre-announcement” of the system in April, which would be followed up by an E3 reveal. That pre-announcement very well may have been the cryptic PDF that popped out of Nintendo’s website just a few short hours ago, which came on the heels of a series of leaked images. With that done, it is only logical to assume that Nintendo will bring the console up in tomorrow’s meeting, to get the message across to their investors that the company is still one well worth investing into.

I think the meeting will include a quick teaser of the Wii 2 – Iwata will probably tell us that their next console is very close to finally seeing the light of day, and has amazing features that make it particularly friendly to third-parties. A press release like the one the 3DS was first announced in may follow the meeting, too. But don’t expect to see any solid confirmation of any particular features, images of the system, and the like – Nintendo will want to save as much of their thunder as possible for E3. Anything we hear tomorrow – that is, if we hear anything tomorrow – will be nothing more than an official guarantee that we’ll have our minds blown when Project Café launches next year.

Regardless of what gets announced, you’ll probably want to follow the meeting as closely as possible. For past meetings, Nintendo have always posted a transcript and video recording of the conference on their Japanese investor relations site, followed by an English translation of both on the English site a few days later. The English versions won’t be available until then, so you’ll want to keep a close eye on the Japanese site. As soon as you see something pop up for April 26th, run it through Google Translate. The translation won’t be particularly good, but anything juicy about the Wii’s successor should be distinctly recognizable nonetheless. Later, when the English site gets updated, you’ll be able to watch a dubbed version of the meeting and read a professionally translated transcript – but by then, any great news will probably have been broken.

An earlier rumour also claimed that the conference would be livestreamed. Now, I’ve been looking for more information about this alleged livestream, but haven’t found anything so far. I’ll keep searching, though, and if I do come across a link to it, I’ll be sure to post it on the blog.

That’s about it. Don’t set your expectations too high for this meeting – it’s for investors, after all, not gamers – and you won’t come away disappointed. Even if you don’t watch it or read through the transcript, I’ll make sure to write about anything noteworthy that comes up in it.