Iwata on Wii: falling sales, social gaming, Wii 2 exists

Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata commented on the Wiis life so far and the companys philosophy on making games consoles

It has been almost four years since the Wii was released to the world and Nintendo now forecasts a drop in sales for the current fiscal year. Iwata believes that although this year’s target of 18 million units is high, given the length of time the Wii has been on the market, it’s a relatively safe forecast.

"If, in the games that we release this year, one were to make it big – explode like we hadnt expected, it is, of course, possible that wed exceed last year,” Iwata says. “However, making announcements of earnings forecasts on the basis of the assumption of such an explosion would be irresponsible for the management of a public company."

Iwata also touched on social gaming and the growing trend of “cloud” computing, stating that Nintendo has little to no interest in developing software for devices built for such purposes. While he does feel that the current game machine model won’t last forever, he believes that game hardware won’t become old-fashioned in the near future. "If you ask why we make game consoles, its because we believe that offering experiences that cannot be done on other devices is our life line… weve not once thought things like well be behind the times, so we should enter social games’.”

Finally, Iwata reconfirmed the existence of a Wii successor with the usual response that Nintendo is always developing new hardware. "As soon as a new system is complete – from the very moment it is complete – were thinking about the plan for the next game machine," he says. He adds that Nintendo is “in no way thinking the Wii is near the end of its platform cycle”, citing Pokémon as having renewed the life of the Game Boy after its apparent peak.

Source: Andriasang