Iwata: Wii U's timing relative to competition isn't important, but pricing is
"Being first in the next generation race is not important at all," Nintendo president Satoru Iwata told Gamasutra in a recent interview. "One of the reasons we believe this is the time for Nintendo to launch the Wii U is it's going to be important for the world."
The world, it turns out, is full of people who have just bought an HDTV and don't plan to replace it anytime soon, and people who might want an alternative to an expensive tablet – albeit one that can't leave the house. Both of these aspects provide an opportunity for a device like the Wii U with a novel second screen. By providing an interesting new angle, Iwata hopes to return Nintendo to profitability. "I just cannot say that it's a good thing for Nintendo at all to record an annual loss for two or more years in a row," the world's most deadpan video game executive said.
Though Iwata isn't concerned with being first to market (even though the Wii U will be), he is very concerned about its price, having learned a painful lesson from the 3DS launch. "The pricing of Wii U is going to be one of the most important elements when it is going to be launched," he said. "The environment is different. Wii U is going to be launching in a different environment than when the Wii was launched. Also, the involvement surrounding [mobile and social] businesses is different than several years ago."
What isn't different from several years ago is Nintendo's confidence in doing its own thing. "We have not changed our strategy. In other words, we just do not care what kind of 'more beef' console Microsoft and Sony might produce in 2013. Our focus is on how we can make our new console different than [others]," Iwata said, reproduced here because we really wanted to put Iwata saying "more beef" into our post.
