Iwata Outlines Nintendo's Next-Gen Strategy

Gamespot has put together a solid piece concerning Nintendo's Next-Gen Strategy as presented at Nintendo's annual corporate strategy conference in Tokyo today. At the conference, Satoru Iwata, Nintendo's company president, explained Nintendo's new philosophy.

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Iwata began by pointing out how the US is currently facing downward movement in the video gaming market, and how it's similar to the shrinkage Japan began facing in 1997. Iwata's explanation for this has been the shunning of the casual gamer. The game industry has worked so hard to keep up with the advanced gamer, they've made games too difficult for the average person, which explains the decline. However, if the game industry dumbs down games, gaming veterans will no longer be satisfied. Hence, the conundrum.

Iwata's solution is to redefine gaming, in an effort to put everyone back at the same page.

"So what we needed was to find a way to make everyone start off from the same point, like back when the Famicom made its launch and everyone touched the controller pad for the first time," he said. "That's the concept behind the Nintendo DS. Its touch-sensitive panel and voice recognition capability will offer a wide range of experiences that will be new for both beginners and hardcore gamers."

As for the newly announded "Revolution" console, which will be revealed at E3 2005, Iwata promises it will be taking a completely different path from that of Microsoft's Xbox Next and Sony's Playstation 3. "It will be clearly distinct from the other next-generation consoles that competing companies will develop," he stated. "What's important isn't a next-generation technology, but a next-generation way in playing games."

The only tidbit he released about this new way of playing games on the Revolution console was that the console will be able to be hooked up to both TV and computer screens.

For more information, and there is more, please check out GameSpot's article.