IGN spoke with Nintendo President Reggie Fils-Aime at E3 2015. Nintendo appears to have a lot on its plate in 2015. The company has to publish games for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U while secretly tinkering on new initiatives behind closed doors. In 2015, Nintendo will launch Yo-Kai Watch in the West and attempt to build it up to Pokemon-levels of success. It will also make smartphone games while continuing to push software integration with amiibo, Nintendo’s successful toys-to-life. And then there’s codename NX, a new dedicated gaming platform that the company is trying to keep under wraps until 2016.

We asked Nintendo of America’s President a bunch of questions at E3 about the company's future (even a series focused on Zelda Wii U). Read on for his answers.

IGN: Let’s talk about Yo-Kai Watch see deal Yo-Kai Watch - Nintendo 3DS $19.97on Gamestop

Loading

Reggie Fils-Aime: Nintendo is quite involved. This is a game that literally sold millions in Japan, and it helped drive a lot of hardware especially with younger kids. So we view this as a very strategic title for us. The team at Level 5 is driving a lot of the localization. We’re playing a bit of a consultation role, but we’ve had a lot of deep conversations around the need for the anime to be out in the marketplace, and to establish the importance of key partnerships in the toy space.

We believe this game could be a very strong hardware driver for us, especially with younger consumers. We think the pairing of this game, especially with our 2DS business, can be quite strong. And we’re very excited about it coming this holiday.

IGN: So you are working on timing for all of it to come out together?

Fils-Aime: We’re working on the timing. I would not say that it’s all going to happen together. The toys especially are a long lead-time. That’s something that has challenges from a timing standpoint. But the goal is to sequence the anime on broad scale TV, the game, and the toys as a one, two, three-type of implementation.

IGN: Will Yo-Kai Watch remain exclusive to Nintendo 3DS? Have you locked this thing down for the next five to ten years?

Fils-Aime: The partnership is very strong with Level 5. I think the Level 5 team has seen how Nintendo creates the handhelds of choice, especially for younger consumers. I think for both companies there’s a clear belief that this has the potential to be a strong, long-term relationship much like we’ve done with Pokemon.

IGN: But how do you convince Level 5 to keep this franchise on Nintendo’s platforms versus smartphones?

Fils-Aime: Here’s the reality: There’s not a lot of five to seven year-olds walking around with smartphones. Even in the tablet space, mom and dad might hand over their tablet for short periods of time. But with this game, much like with any battle-trade-share type of game, the kid consumer is going to spend a lot of hours. The benefit of doing that on a dedicated device is very strong.

IGN: Briefly in the Nintendo Digital Event, you mention NX and smartphones, and you made it clear that you’re not talking about them at E3. Is this because we’re way too early or you don’t want it to compete with your core platform business?

Loading

Fils-Aime: E3 is a console gaming show. And I say that despite all of the mobile entrants that are here. I say that despite mobile content that a number of publishers show. Like many folks, I watch a lot of the conferences. And you can hear the groan when a particular company talks about mobile in their presentation. That’s not what the media and the attending consumer at the show really want to hear about. And so that’s why we’re focusing on console gaming here. We’re focusing on our Wii U business and on our 3DS business. There’s going to be lots of opportunities to talk about mobile, NX, and our IP expansion. We just don’t feel that it’s the proper venue to do that at the show.

IGN: Are you then saying that E3 is the wrong crowd for that message?

Fils-Aime: What I’m saying is that, from Nintendo’s perspective, at E3 we want to focus on console gaming – handheld and home console – and, in our view it’s best to focus on a tight window, essentially from now until early 2016. That’s our mentality. I’ll grant you that it’s a different approach than other people take. People will come to this show and showcase concepts that aren’t going to hit the marketplace for three years. This is not what we believe in.

IGN: Let’s talk about your retail and digital business. Are people mostly getting their Nintendo games through retailers or are they downloading them? How different are they numbers between the two platforms?

Fils-Aime: Here are a number of points. First, our digital business is growing very strongly. That’s because the content that we offer in our eShop goes beyond simply what you can get at retail. Yes, we have what we call dual-distribution titles. These games are sold through the eShop and retail. But we also have Virtual Console, which is content you could only get through the eShop. And we also have content specifically designed for the eShop that you can’t get anywhere else. That combination has created a very effective, growing business for us.

Second point: both the Wii U and 3DS, in the Americas, are effectively 100% connected devices, meaning the consumer has setup a [Nintendo Network ID]. They connect to a Wi-Fi network. For us, that’s a very effective means of not only driving our eShop business, but also driving a number of other ways we connect with our consumer. GamePad alerts are one example. The level of connectivity is the strongest in the Americas. That’s something that, from a business standpoint, we can drive very effectively here.

The third point is that the actual sell through of physical versus digital really depends on the game. Let me give you two examples. A very large percent of Animal Crossing, and in that same genre Tomodachi Life, sold digitally. Why is that? Well these are games that the consumer wants to always have with them. They want the five to ten minute opportunities to open it up, visit the island, and do something fun. They don’t want to deal with swapping out game cards. It’s a very quick experience.

On the other hand you have games like Super Smash Bros. The Smash Bros. player does not want to invest literally 100-plus hours and, even in the back of their mind have a sense that something might go wrong and lose the time invested. Not that it would happen, because our systems are very robust. But what I’m talking about is what’s going on in the minds of that consumer. And so the digital percent for Smash Bros. both on Wii U and 3DS is lower than average.

We’ve learned that it is game-by-game how the digital percent equates. We’ve gotten to a point where we can estimate pretty effectively what that mix is gonna be.

IGN: Could you go into more detail? What’s the percentage for games like Animal Crossing and Tomodachi Life versus Smash Bros.?

Fils-Aime: If you look at our annual report, it shows the progression of our digital business. If you do the math, roughly, it shows that digital revenue is about 20% of the total. So 20% is the average. Animal Crossing, for example, is north of 30%. A game like Smash Bros. is less than 15%.