Nintendo President On Future Of Gaming

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."

Comments

Make up your mind

[anon*127.0.0.1]

Doesn't "...gamers are getting older and tastes are becoming more sophisticated" disagree with ""It is imperative that a game machine is easy to use for anyone"? Which is it?

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

Older gamers don't buy fewer games because they want longer play value or high production values. They buy fewer games because they're ADULTS, with spouses and kids and houses and cars and jobs and all the other shackles of adulthood. If you can only squeeze in 3 or four hours a week of game playing time, one game will last you quite a while. And you're much less likely to tolerate a bad/boring/indifferent game.