Speaking with Fortune, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime says that Nintendo are invested in the eSports space, and are interested in exploring it further.
“We saw success last year with the Smash Bros. Invitational, and Smash Bros. has always been a game in the eSports community,” Fils-Aime says.
“What we’re really gratified to see is that the community has now embraced Super Smash Bros. for Wii U because it has the speed and customization they like. We’re also seeing them embrace Mario Kart 8, as well as Splatoon, in a competitive environment. We’ve always been close to the eSports space and will continue to be.”
Fils-Aime also notes that the recent Nintendo World Championships event was viewed over 5 million times over the course of the first four days, and that viewership remained strong even as E3 came to a close, which indicates that the event could have a “nice long tail”. He adds that he believes eSports is a great way for fans to get hands-on time with newer games like Splatoon.
“We’re fortunate that we’ve got the range of content to pull it off in the here and now, and we’re really gratified to see the reactions,” Fils-Aime says. “All of that is going to go into the mix as we think about proper opportunities, future E3s as well as potentially taking the idea outside of E3. So it’s something we’re going to be looking at really hard.”
