NIntendo Investor Meeting Wrap Up (7th/May/2014)

Nintendo just held their latest investor's meeting today, and we got some new and rather game-changing news just like last time.

One of the interesting tidbits we got was about a new Mario Kart 8 service that will be available exclusively on smartphones once the game releases this month. The service will allow users to watch any MK8 clips uploaded by players of the actual game using the Mario Kart TV service available in the game.

An example of the service shown during the meeting.

Whether the service will be an actual downloadable app, or browser-based is still unshared, but we will be apparently be able to use the app "by the end of the fiscal year", according to analyst David Gibson who was present during the meeting.

Another piece of news we got was about the Wii U's startup time, and how Nintendo plans to drastically increase it during a major June update that will come this year. An example of the bootup can be seen below.

The one thing that it still unknown though is how this affects Miiverse, and the Miiverse plaza that is usually brought up during the current booting of the console. Is there an option for it somewhere?

Finally, we got more news on how Nintendo not only plans to use the NFC feature built into the Wii U's Gamepad, but also how the 3DS will be used as well.

Nintendo plans to sell an IR (Infrared)-based peripheral for the 3DS that will allow it to read NFC figurines and other codes just like the Wii U. They also went on to mention that these NFC capabilities will be expanded on and talked about at greater length during this year's E3.

Concept images of how the NFC system would work in both cases.

Finally, Nintendo told the investors that they are already beginning to work on their next generation of main hardware, however are unsure of when it will be ready and/or released.

Iwata - we are preparing for next generation hardware as always doing, when release? Difficult to declare..
— David Gibson (@gibbogame) May 8, 2014

That's all the news we've got for this time, but be sure to stick around with the Nintendo Alliance for more news on all things Nintendo from here on out!

Update:

All of Iwata's presentation slides shown during the meeting are now available for the public. They can be viewed by clicking here.