Nintendo Australia

Nintendo Australia Pty. Ltd

Type	Proprietary Limited, Subsidiary, Private
Industry	Video games
Founded	1994
Headquarters	Scoresby, Victoria
Key people	Yuji Bando: Managing Director, Hiroshi Yamauchi, Graham Kerry, Susumu Tanaka
Products	Game Boy line, Nintendo 64, Nintendo GameCube, Nintendo DS, Wii, Video game software
Revenue	A$138.9 million (2007) [1]
Net income	A$6.4 million (2007) [1]
Employees	97 (2011) [2]
Website	Nintendo Australia

Nintendo Australia Pty. Ltd. established in 1994, located in Victoria is Australia's local head office, sales, licensing and distribution centre for products and other Intellectual Properties created by Nintendo Co., Ltd of Kyoto, Japan and is owned by Nintendo Co., Ltd in Japan. Prior distribution of Nintendo products inside Australia had been handled by Mattel. The company was originally jointly managed by Susumu Tanaka of Nintendo UK and Graham Kerry who worked prior as the general Manager of Mattel.^[3] It is currently managed by Yuji Bando, who succeeded Rose Lappin as Managing Director in March 2010.^[4] Rose Lappin had worked for Nintendo since the early 90's when Nintendo's products were distributed in Australia by Mattel. Aside from distributing its own products, the company also distributes some games for its systems by developers including Capcom and Atlus.

Nintendo Australia distribute Nintendo's products to most of the Oceanic region. Distribution of Nintendo's products in New Zealand was handled by Monaco Corporation Ltd, then Softprint Interactive Ltd, until Softprint went into bankruptcy. There was a major delay of Nintendo Australia's products in New Zealand after Softprint's bankruptcy until Nintendo Australia took over marketing and distribution of their products in New Zealand in the middle of 2008. Nintendo Australia then heavily marketed the DS and Wii in New Zealand throughout September and October 2008.

Nintendo Australia also acts as the Australian office for The Pokémon Company and handles all licensing for the Pokémon products and also handles licensing of Nintendo's other IP's to Toy Companies like Takara Tomy. Nintendo Australia handles all licensing of the Pokémon anime, and has given the Australian distribution rights to Magna Pacific. Former distributors were Siren Entertainment and Shock.

Sales performance

Nintendo Australia has sold over 12 million video games, over 2.5 million Game Boys and over 2 million consoles to date including over half a million Nintendo 64 consoles ^[5] and 162,936 GameCubes to the third quarter of 2006.^[6] The Wii has sold over 2 million as of November 2010 ^[7] and the Nintendo DS has sold over 3 million units to December 2010.^[8] The Pokémon video games have sold over 2 million copies.

Distribution deals with 3rd parties

• Capcom (Resident Evil, Megaman and Ace Attorney series, up to Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, Mega Man Xtreme 2 and Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney respectively)
• Atlus
• Rising Star Games (Harvest Moon main series only)
• Natsume (Harvest Moon and Legend of the River King series except Harvest Fishing)
• Namco (Back catalogue up to 2007)
• Sega (Back catalogue 2005-2006)
• Enix (All Nintendo games by Enix were localised and published by Nintendo Australia until the Square Enix merger)
• Kemco
• Koei
• The Tetris Company (Owns Australian rights to all Tetris games on Nintendo consoles)

Countries which Nintendo Australia distribute to

• Australia
• New Zealand
• Cook Islands
• Fiji
• New Caledonia (Distributes Nintendo Australia and French NOE releases)
• Papua New Guinea
• Samoa
• Vanuatu

Marketing

Marketing of Nintendo's products in Australia has been very relaxed since its establishment in 1994, but marketing has picked up considerably since Rose Lappin was named Managing Director of Nintendo Australia.

According to Ms Lappin, this is a result of the way the company is structured globally, meaning game releases are aligned to Europe rather than Japan where titles typically arrive first. She says the company is working towards a schedule that would reduce delays in titles for regions outside of Japan.

"Our fans are very passionate and want games straight away. We are working on that as a priority and trying to get [the release schedule] to be more global."

Nintendo Australia markets their games though mass media, magazines and the Internet, and has the Australian version of the monthly magazine, Official Nintendo Magazine.

Nintendo Australia plays its Australian TV spots in New Zealand, which is fine for general advertising, but often means that TV spots in New Zealand show the Australian release dates for games, which are generally a few days earlier than the actual NZ release. This can lead to some confusion when people see a release date in the TV spot, but are then told at stores that the game will not be out until a few days later.

Exclusive hardware and games

Over the years a few games have been released far earlier than in Europe, such as 1080° Snowboarding (which was released in March 1998 while Europe waited until December), Animal Crossing was also released nearly a year ahead of Europe (though it arrived in Australia over a year after North America). The Australian version of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time contained a gold cartridge, though the European version did not. The Game Boy Color had a custom shell featuring the Australian flag and the Game Boy Advance SP received a model that had branding by Rip Curl. An All Blacks SP was also released and for a limited time only Toys R Us was selling a limited edition "Gold" coloured Game Boy Advance SP which was only available to Australia .

Games that were distributed in Australia but not in North America or Japan include Super International Cricket. Nintendo Australia have the Nintendo rights to some games from Capcom and has most of the rights to new games from Atlus for the Wii and DS. Nintendo Australia has been publishing the Harvest Moon games on Nintendo consoles since the late 90's.

Community and charity

Nintendo Australia is an active and longstanding sponsor of the Starlight Children's Foundation, providing Nintendo consoles and games that can be wheeled to a child’s bedside while they are in hospital. Nintendo characters and games gurus also visit children’s hospitals nationally.

Nintendo also donates product to various sporting, leisure, not-for-profit and youth organisations nationally.

Since the Nintendo DS was released in 2005, Nintendo and Telstra, which was then apart of the Australian Government (Now only hold a 49% stake), announced that they had become partners and that Telstra would put Wireless hotspots in every McDonald's restaurant in Australia (except food courts) and would have DS Game Demos available for download in every restaurant. This is still a continuing partnership as of 2009.

Events

During the publication of Nintendo Magazine System (1993 til 2000), Nintendo ran party tours in conjunction with Toys "R" Us. These events were only promoted in Nintendo Magazine System and happened every two to three years.

Each year since 1999 Nintendo stages free national tours involving live character appearances, stage shows, Nintendo challenges, product giveaways and competitions. To date Nintendo’s Pokémon Tours have been the country's biggest free, shopping centre activities ever, including Pokémon Mew Tour in 1999, Pokémon Stadium 2000 and Pokémon Celebi Tour in 2001. Nintendo Australia also hosted the world’s biggest Pokémon event in Sydney in 2000, including the global Pokémon Stadium Championship.

In January 2006, Nintendo held the Nintendo DS Connection Tour '06 and visited 4 states; New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and Victoria. Another Connection Tour was held during June/July 2006 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Nintendo's mascot and most famous character, "Mario". During this tour, they visited four states including Victoria, Queensland, New South Wales and Western Australia.

In September/October 2006, Nintendo hosted the Pokémon 10th Anniversary - Journey Across Oz tour. This tour was held in Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia. A number of Toys R Us stores also held events, in the states mentioned before, and South Australia.

In November 2006, Nintendo Australia hosted a National Play Wii Event allowing potential Wii customers and non gamers to try Nintendo's newest console (Nintendo Wii) just over a month before it was released across Australia on 7 December. Games playable included Wii Sports, Wii Play, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Excite Truck and many more. However, some states were limited to Wii Play, Wii Sports, Twilight Princess and WarioWare: Smooth Moves.

In June/July 2007, Nintendo Australia held the Nintendo DS Connection Tour '07. The main focus was on the newest Pokémon games: Pokémon Diamond and Pearl. The tour visited five states: Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, New South Wales and Western Australia.^[9]

In September/October 2007, Nintendo Australia held a Nintendo Wii tour called Big Games for Big Brains. The tour was to promote Big Brain Academy Wii. The tour went to five states: South Australia, Victoria, Western Australia, Queensland, New South Wales.^[10]

In January 2008, Nintendo Australia announced that they would sponsor the 2008 Australian Open as the official gaming console. Because of that sponsorship, Nintendo Australia held a Nintendo Wii competition called Wii Championships. The winner got to play Mark Philippoussis. There was also a lounge to relax and play Sight Training.

Nintendo Australia announced in mid-2008 that it would open an Australian Nintendo World Centre in Melbourne in the near future and opening stores in Sydney and Brisbane is a possibility.

In November 2008, Nintendo Australia and EB Games Australia announced "The Nintendo Experience", which is essentially a demonstration of what Nintendo has to offer. It was held at EB Games' Swanston Street store, and EB Games has hinted that it is looking at doing the same thing in Brisbane and certain stores on Queensland's East Coast since EB Games Australia's headquarters are in Brisbane. Nintendo Australia ran a competition for 15 VIP's to attend on its opening night. Rose Lappin announced that Club Nintendo Australia would launch at Christmas or Q1 2009.

In October 2009, Nintendo Australia officially opened "The Nintendo Connection" at Myer in Sydney. This is the first Australian Nintendo centre to be located outside Victoria. This will be the place to hold Nintendo events at Sydney.

In June/July 2010, Nintendo Australia held the Nintendo Connection Tour 2010. The main focus was on the Mario series games, in particular Super Mario Galaxy 2 where players could play the game before it was released (in Queensland only, the rest of Australia was done after the release date). The tour visited five states: Queensland, Victoria, Western Australia, New South Wales and South Australia. Also, New Zealand was part of the tour.

In September 2011, Nintendo Australia held the Nintendo Connection Tour 2011, similar to the 2011 event, the main focus was The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, with a demo version available, along with demo versions of other upcoming games and already released games. The tour went around to each state at selected Westfield stores.

Controversy

Australia, and the PAL region in general, are known to have later release dates than other regions for many Nintendo games. This has caused an uproar by some of Nintendo Australia's customers. One example of this was Super Paper Mario, which was released almost 6 months after North America.^[11] Despite the uproar with the delayed PAL release date for Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Nintendo Australia had moved the release date sooner to 26 June 2008.^[12] In September 2007 Aaron Rex Davies published a detailed report on game delays in Australia.^[13] It covered most justifications for the delays, and explained why they were unacceptable. This report was subsequently received by Nintendo Australia, who were then questioned about it during October 2007. Nintendo Australia gave a "No comment" response, which incensed some fans.^[14] The backlash was sufficient enough for Nintendo Australia to address the issue after being contacted by Kotaku Australia, blaming the delays on PAL conversion and localisation issues,^[15] even though these two justifications were directly addressed in Davies' report.

In December 2007, Rose Lappin was interviewed by The Age.^[16] During the interview, she was questioned about the release dates of Wii games to which she responded:

“...the company is working towards a schedule that would see no more than two week delays in titles for regions outside of Japan."

—Louisa Hearn, The Age

This was seen as a possible sign that Nintendo Australia were attempting to actively reduce delays. Soon after the article was published, Vooks contacted Nintendo Australia. They were told that she has been misquoted, and that Nintendo Australia "are currently making efforts to minimise the time needed for localisations, as we understand that the difference in worldwide release dates is frustrating to fans.”.^[17]

Nintendo Australia has also been criticised for the expensive cost of their games, but this is the same with all video game distributors and subsidiaries in Australia, and Rose Lappin has said that the Australian and New Zealand dollar are weak on the exchange conversion rate, and they must raise the prices in order to keep running and to make a profit for their parent companies. This is despite multiple and recent occasions where the Australian dollar is reaching parity with the US.^{[citation needed]}

Localisations

Only on rare occasions has Nintendo ever attempted localisations for video games for the Australian market nowadays after Seiji Tsukasa's reign over NAL. Before 2001, all Natsume, Enix, Kemco and Capcom developed for Nintendo's consoles had Australian localisations, most of the time choosing to be in line with North American releases instead of PAL Region releases for the Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64. Before 2001, Nintendo Australia localised some of its first party releases e.g. the Game Boy Gallery, Mario's Picross and Mario Kart 64.

Most Nintendo DS games published by Nintendo Australia use localisations that originate from the USA, in comparison to other third parties which source localisations from both North America and Europe. All Wii games use European localisations in Australia due to being allocated as part of Nintendo's PAL Region, despite not being a subsidiary of Nintendo of Europe.

References and notes

1. ^ ^{a b} "Wii bonanza for Nintendo Australia". News.com.au. http://australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,21819698-15306,00.html. Retrieved 2007-06-13. 
2. ^ "CSR Report 2011 - Global CSR Activities". Nintendo. http://www.nintendo.co.jp/csr/en/report2011/02/index.html. Retrieved 27 October 2011. 
3. ^ Nintendo Magazine System: issue 9, page 3
4. ^ Aussie-Nintendo.com - Rose takes the reins at Nintendo Australia. http://www.aussie-nintendo.com/?v=news&p=18138
5. ^ Nintendo Magazine System: issue 70 January 1999, page 6
6. ^ Aussie-Nintendo.com - GameCube barely exceeds 160K in Aussie life. http://aussie-nintendo.com/?v=news&p=8146
7. ^ "Wii Sells Through More Than Two Million Units". Nintendo Australia. 8 November 2010. http://www.nintendo.com.au/index.php?action=news&nid=385&pageID=6. Retrieved 18 November 2010. 
8. ^ "Three Million Nintendo DS consoles now sold in Australia". Vooks.net. 23 December 2010. http://www.vooks.net/story-19799-Three-Million-Nintendo-DS-consoles-now-sold-in-Australia.html. Retrieved 9 January 2011. 
9. ^ Connection Tour '07 - Nintendo of Australia (accessed 2 August 2007).
10. ^ [1] - Nintendo of Australia (accessed 29 September 2007).
11. ^ "Super Paper Mario". Gamespot. http://au.gamespot.com/wii/rpg/superpapermario/similar.html?mode=versions&om_act=convert&om_clk=tabs&tag=headerimage;more. Retrieved 2008-01-29. 
12. ^ Super Smash Bros. Brawl >> Nintendo Wii
13. ^ "Research report into excessive delays in release of Wii software by Nintendo in Australia and New Zealand regions" by Aaron Rex Davies (PDF)
14. ^ "No comment". aaronights.com. http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~aaronights/. Retrieved 2008-01-29. 
15. ^ "Nintendo Australia Responds To Wii Delays". Kotaku Australia. http://www.kotaku.com.au/games/2007/10/nintendo_australia_responds_to_wii_delays.html. Retrieved 2008-01-29. 
16. ^ "Christmas is coming and Nintendo leads the pack". Melbourne: The Age. 2007-12-05. http://www.theage.com.au/news/articles/why-nintendo-leads-the-pack/2007/12/04/1196530668281.html. Retrieved 2008-01-29. 
17. ^ "Nintendo Australia clarify '2 weeks' quote regarding releases". Vooks. http://vooks.net/modules.php?module=article&id=12438. Retrieved 2008-01-29. 

External links

• Nintendo Australia