Jim Merrick, Nintendo's European marketing chief, has spoken about the future of Nintendo in Europe, the GB Micro (including pricing) and possible in-store Wi-Fi download pods for the DS.

GamesIndustry.biz has recently managed to talk to Nintendo's European marketing chief Jim Merrick about all things Nintendo. Topics range from the Game Boy Micro to Europe's marketing campaign, and much more. To read the full interview head over to GamesIndustry.biz.

It's a fairly common perception that the UK is one of the toughest markets in the world for Nintendo, competitively; is that a fair take on the situation?

Well, if I compare the UK market to other markets, the UK is just running in hyperspace compared to the other markets. The media coverage is much faster and broader in the UK, the retailers get behind a product and there's a lot of promotion and a lot of bundling activities, and they really embrace the product. But the UK consumer, or at least the UK industry, is also fast to drop a product. If something isn't selling very well, boom, into the bargain bin it goes... I guess that's part of the package that you get. Some of the other markets are a little slower on the uptake - I mean, look at Germany as an example, where they tend not to be early adopters as you might find in the UK, but we enjoy a lot longer term sales there.

It does dictate a different strategy in the market, so it's tough to come up with a single pan-European strategy.

And we're definitely going to see both of those [Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness and Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess] this side of Christmas in Europe?

You've got it. One of the strategies that Nintendo is really aggressively employing is the more global strategy - it's not to always assume that Europe is last, that Europe is months or years late on getting product. It's a difficult thing to accomplish. We think that people don't understand that adding seven languages to Animal Crossing does delay the game a bit... But that said, we are not going to be two years late, as we were with Animal Crossing on GameCube, on any other products.

Even last year, Zelda: Minish Cap launched first in Europe - before Japan, before the USA. We're doing that increasingly, looking at where the best opportunities in the market are globally, not the assumption that it'll be Japan, then US, then Europe.

And you know, from a practical standpoint, Europe is the only market that's growing. Year on year we have phenomenal growth in Europe, and there's tremendous potential here. Er, there. We're here. You know what I mean! [laughs]