Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has again dismissed calls for the company to move into the smartphone market, saying that doing so would mean "Nintendo would cease to be Nintendo."
Iwata once again faced calls for Nintendo to turn to smartphones in a bid to revive its fortunes, after its pre-Tokyo Game Show conference, in which it announced a host of new 3DS games, caused its share price to fall by five per cent. Speaking to Nikkei, though, Iwata said that while he could see merit in such a move in the short term, it would be catastrophic in the long term.
"This is absolutely not under consideration," he said. "If we did this, Nintendo would cease to be Nintendo. Having a hardware development team in-house is a major strength. It's the duty of management to make use of those strengths.
"It's probably the correct decision in the sense that the moment we started to release games on smartphones we'd make profits. However, I believe my responsibility is not to short-term profits, but to Nintendo's mid- and long-term competitive strength."
As we reported yesterday, this latest drop in Nintendo's shares - its stock price has now halved since the turn of the year - was once again blamed on the company's reluctance to join the rush to smartphones. Despite Iwata's claim that the new announcements meant 3DS had "the kind of extensive line-up that has probably never been seen before in the history of videogames," investors were unmoved, with one saying: "I don't think the new games will make any difference.
With Super Mario 3D Land to be released in November, and Mario Kart 7 and Monster Hunter 3G due the following month, Iwata is perhaps entitled to be confident. This is, however, the first sign of recognition that Nintendo would stand to benefit from a move into the smartphone market, if only in the short term.
Source: Andriasang
Comments
11He's dead right. I remember before the Wii launched and all the talk was of Nintendo becoming a cross platform publisher and abandoning the hardware business, even though the Gamecibe was a very proffitable machine and actually had imo the best lineup of games of it's generation.
Now those same idiots are calling on Nintendo to follow the new flavour of the month, total BS.
Nintendo have always made great & proffitable hardware. Nintendo are still the best in the business at making games. If everyone else wants to jump on the Apple bandwaggon and ride it to the inevitable app store crash thats coming that's fine, but it doesn't mean Nintendo should destroy it's business with them.
Here here!
Well said, mate.
Damn tooting!
The Gamecube had what now?
I agree with you about Nintendo not going into mob gaming but...
"the Gamecibe was a very proffitable machine and actually had imo the best lineup of games of it's generation"
Come on, take off the rose tinted glasses. That console was not that profitable, not in comparison to the PS2.
As for it's line-up, it had some great games but the line-up was extremely limited and for my money didn't have the best iterations of any of the Nintendo series e.g Mario 64> Sunshine, Ocarina> Wind Waker, F zero x > GX, Super Mario Kart> Double dash, the list goes on and on.
Nearly all the 3rd party exclusives later came out on PS2 or Xbox due to the poor install base of the GC effecting game sales.
The gamecube had a fantastic library of games. Pikmin, Paper Mario, Resident Evil 4, Sunshine, Double Dash, Wind Waker, Toadstool Tour, Four Swords, Animal Crossing, Luigis Mansion, Resident Evil Remake...
Nintendo may have ended up a distant second that generation but they still made plenty of money due to always selling hardware at a profit and having a very loyal fanbase for their first party titles. I couldn't care less how many more units the ps2 sold, GC was a fantastic machine.
I'm not saying there were no good games, in fact i really did like my Gamecube (i had all three consoles in that generation).
So ignoring the games i already addressed...
Resi 1 remake: Remake, while a very good one, still a remake.
Resi 4: Later released on PS2 with added weapons
Pikmin: great concept, spwaned a sequel, then nothing beyond those cash cow Wii remake things, just not a sustainable, long term IP
Animal Crossing: Even Nintendo wouldn't release this outside of Japan for ages, niche to say the least
Gamecube had no killer racing game, no killer fps, by the end no sports franchises, no exclusive fighters beyond smash bros (even soul caliber 2 had the worst, game breaking, exclusive in Link).
If you like Nintendo games then yes Gamecube was the tits but if you wanted anything different you were screwed.
PS2 on the other hand shared a lot of those timed exclusives (viewtiful Joe, Killer 7, Resi 4) but also had the likes of Metal Gear, Ridge Racer, Gran Turismo, Tekken, Ratchet and Clank (any of the R+C games are better than Mario Sunshine), Final Fantasy, the early Smackdown series, Rainbow 6, the first Guitar Hero, the EyeToy (hows that for innovation). ICO and Shadow of Collosus, God of War (fucking GOW, one of the best looking and playing games of the generation), Silent Hill, Okami (later a Wii game), Katamari (more Nintendo than Nintendo could be), Devil May Cry, Kindom Hearts and finally (while not PS2 exclusive but never on GC) one of the most influential games of all time GTA3!
I'm no fanboy of any console, and i loved my gamecube but over the course of a console's life time the PS2 had the larger, more varied and in the end better games, at pretty much every turn there is a better game on the PS2 than GC. The only game i will concede to in PS2/GC is F Zero, as there was no PS2 Wipeout.
We're arguing over opinion which is pointless but one thing cannot let go... Rachet and Clank better than Mario?!?!? come on :)
Nintendo made money on it and could easily sustain their business. I'm not seeing what the problem was with the GC.
Any serious gamer, imo, had both a GC and PS2 in that era.
Yeah, I agree.