Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has labeled the typical four-year console life cycle as “too inflexible an approach” for a company that wants to “change entertainment completely” with each new hardware release.

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Speaking at a recent Nintendo Q3 financial results conference, as reported by Aussie-Nintendo, Iwata said that the only reason Nintendo would release new hardware, other than to transform the market, was if the potential of existing platforms had been completely exhausted. To that effect, he said that an announcement of a follow-up to its DS handheld was not imminent, as Nintendo still has plenty of ideas it hopes to implement to further utilize the existing model.

"I’m quite doubtful that such a notion of platform cycles can be applied in the future...As we continue our research and study for new hardware, when we will be able to launch a new kind of hardware will actually depend on when we can change entertainment completely, and so have a strong impact on people around the world. Or, there will certainly be a time when we have to say that we have done everything possible with the current machine, that we can never propose anything new,” Iwata said.

"Lately, I cannot say I’m making video games on the frontline of development, but as a person who used to develop software, the availability of new hardware means that we possess a new weapon. We long for a new weapon whenever we cry that we cannot fight anymore with the current weapons. But today’s situation is such that we are not desperate for any new weapons at all.

"Whenever we are working on so-called next generation hardware, we are always thinking in terms of the future,” he continued. "We need to forecast what the future will be like with the expected evolution of new technologies which are available at any given time, and try to identify the so-called “sweet spot” of technology over the next few years.

“Scheduling for a rather fixed launch date 4 years from today, regardless of future changes in the industry and the market, appears to be too inflexible an approach to us.

"Also, since Nintendo’s hardware engineers and software creators are always communicating closely, only when both teams agree that it is time to challenge the market with new hardware that we will launch it. So, it is not a correct observation that we are having any trouble deciding on the launch timing of the next hardware.

“We are not suffering from the shortage of new ideas for DS. I heard that some of the attendees to our October 10 conference were expecting to hear about a new portable machine announcement, but we never had that kind of notion in the first place."