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Nintendo President On Future Of Gaming

Posted by simoniker on from the listen-and-ye-shall-look-quizzical dept.

Thanks to IGN Cube for their summary of Nintendo president Satoru Iwata's keynote speech at the 2003 Tokyo Game Show. Interestingly, Iwata suggested that "...gamers are getting older and tastes are becoming more sophisticated", but didn't necessarily see that as a good thing for industry growth, "because gamers might buy fewer games due to longer play value and a desire to play only software with very high production values." He also remained unconvinced that convergence of functionality for game consoles was the right path, saying: "Although PS2 was a sales success because it had a DVD player function, it troubled me that we had moved to a hardware where the sole function wasn't playing games" and concluded: "It is imperative that a game machine is easy to use for anyone. I don't agree that multi-function hardware is the only answer."

2 of 66 comments (clear)

  1. Let's face the facts by gasaraki · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Despite the fact that Nintendo aren't going so well in America with this current generation of consoles, they're just about the only company really willing to innovate. Microsoft especially has never innovated a damn thing in their life, and Xbox is no exception, they just milk some done-to-death idea over and over, only with a bigger budget and a bigger hype machine. Meanwhile Nintendo is the only company still around that's willing to take risks. If they can't survive against the all-powerful force that is crappy MS hype, I wouldn't be looking forward to gaming's co-called "future" under Microsoft anyway (just wait for Halo XP, killer title in 2007).

  2. Re:Make up your mind by exick · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't think the two are in disagreement. He's likely differentiating between "gamers" and "people who play games".

    Someone who just plays games might be the guy who pops in Halo and plays with his buddies for an hour and a half before they head out to the bar, or the little kid that likes to play Kingdom Hearts because he wants to hear Donald talk.

    A gamer is someone who would, say, post messages in a Slashdot Games forum to debate the finer points of speech given by a Nintendo executive. =)

    How about we put it this way: "A game machine should not be unnecessarily complicated."

    I think we can all get on board with that.