Iwata Still Not Considering Price Drops

Nintendo put up yesterday a transcript from a Q&A session that followed its investors briefing late last week. An English version is on the way, but for those who just can't wait, here's a summary of CEO Satoru Iwata's response to a question regarding his stance on price drops, in particular with regards to possibly dropping the DS Lite price as a means of spurring things up in the Japanese market.

Iwata's response was that in his previous comments on the price drop matter, he wasn't trying to say that a price-based strategy would be forever forbidden. However, price drops end up being a global thing. If, for instance, in response to the poor Japanese market, Nintendo were to drop the price in Japan, the rest of the world would feel that a price drop might be on the way as well. While 10 or 15 years back, companies were able to set pricing in each country independently, it's now become a completely global issue. This is why even if things aren't going quite as well as expected in Japan, Nintendo is not thinking about a price drop for Japan.

In addition to this, while it's clear that a price drop will increase demand, a variety of analysis has suggested that the effect can be short lived. Thus, price drops are something that should only be considered when they can have the greatest impact on business.

"At the very least," said Iwata, "we currently don't have a solid image regarding a price drop."

The Q&A covers a lot of ground, with discussions on used games, iPhone, the recently launched Wii no Ma video (cough -- infomercial -- cough) Channel and the WiiWare download service. You'll definitely want to take a look at the full English transcript once Nintendo puts it up, presumably in the coming days.