Nintendo swimming in a clear blue ocean

Filed in archive Nintendo on July 17, 2007

The Times has a piece on Nintendo's Blue Ocean strategy, citing current Ninty prez Satoru Iwata's vision and determination to plunge head on to the untapped waters and leave its competitors fighting against each other.

In 2002, the Harry-Potterish game engineer, 47, became only the fourth Nintendo president in 118 years. "I was the youngest man on the board. It was a big surprise," he says.

Before long, he was convinced that the biggest blue ocean lay in making video games for "people who generally don't play video games". Women are the most prized targets but this untapped market spans a vast swath of the population - everybody, actually, bar fast-thumbed teenaged boys.

"Intellectually, yes, this sounds obvious," Mr Iwata says. "But within Nintendo, among the shareholders, everywhere, there was resistance. When I first raised the idea, in 2003, nobody believed it was possible to broaden the games market.