Nintendo on Wii U game demos: “Possibly”

In Nintendo’s latest investor relations meeting, Iwata gave us several insights into Nintendo’s future strategies for the Wii U and the 3DS, including his reassurance that the Wii U won’t suffer from the same lack of software that the Wii did. Next up, we’ve got his word on free game demos – one of the many elements of an online service that Nintendo has disappointed on.

Iwata acknowledged that people see the value in a big-name franchise like Mario or The Legend of Zelda, and are willing to pay full price for them, but by contrast, they may be reluctant to risk $60 on a new and original IP that has virtually no recognition in the world. He more or less confirmed that we’ll start seeing free demos appearing on our 3DS’s while we slept, and marked the same feature as a possibility for the Wii U.

[When] Nintendo would like to ask users to try a specific new game, we should deliver it to their Nintendo 3DS, and possibly Wii U, with their prior consent and recommend that they just try it and, if they like it, they can pay for it. In this way, we need to introduce users to unknown products. Consumers are likely to be convinced to pay about 5,000 yen (approx. $60) for a well-established franchise product, but not all the people are willing to pay a certain amount of money for an innovative but unknown product.

Sounds like good news to me. Let’s just hope that Nintendo keeps the demos available indefinitely, instead of removing them after several weeks like they currently do on the Wii Shop Channel.