Iwata Interview

Filed in archive News on January 7, 2008

Image from money.cnn.com

NeoGAF user Mandoric translated an interview with Nintendo president Satoru Iwata. As usual, the Nintendo chief sounds friendly and affable: utterly impossible to dislike.

He talked about the motivation for Nintendo to create such oddball platforms:

- Why do you think the Wii and DS have been such hits so far?

We were correct to aim for, with both platforms, expanding the target market. In the past few years, the number of gamers has decreased, driven by negative images such as "interferes with study" and "causes crime". With the DS that we launched in '04, we attempted to create a platform that no one could hate.

- What were your focuses when designing the systems?

When asking people why they didn't game, we received many answers like "It's too hard" and "It takes too much time". Due to this, we focused on easy controls, the ability to play short bursts while on the train, and a variety of software aimed at nontraditional consumers. For those who found button input too complex, we added pen input. As well, we formed a new company image with "Brain Training", which helped the Wii as well.

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