Nintendo President, Satoru Iwata, did what every developer does in the build up to a follow up of a previous release by pointing out the faults in the Wii and explaining how the Wii U won’t make the same mistakes.
The Nintendo Wii sold remarkably well in its first few years before interest in the console waned and Nintendo lost out to both Sony and Microsoft. The President of Nintendo, Satoru Iwata, was very candid when he explained the mistakes they made with the Wii and how they planned on making the Wii U more hardcore gamer friendly.
Iwata explained that they plan on changing their tactics and policies from the ones employed during the launch of the Nintendo Wii because, “there are issues to overcome."
He elaborated on what those issues are before first pointing out what the Wii managed to do right. He said, "The Wii was able to reach a large number of new consumers who had never played games before by bringing hands-on experiences with its Wii Sports and Wii Fit." before moving on, “However, we could not adequately create the situation that such new consumers played games frequently or for long, consistent periods.”
In essence the casual gamers did not become core gamers and resulted in a drop in profits for Nintendo after a certain time period
He also admitted that because they were so focused on the casual gamer they did not give the give the hardcore gamer much attention. Iwata elaborated, “Consequently, we presume some people felt that the Wii was not a game system for them or they were not willing to play with the Wii.”
Iwata explained that once the game had been branded a system for casual gamers it became, “extremely difficult to change their perceptions later.”
As for the company’s plans for the Nintendo Wii U, Iwata explained that they will be providing both width (the Wii U’s ability to cater to all sorts of gamers) and depth (to cater to the hardcore or repeat gamer).
He explained that “with the Nintendo DS and the Wii,” the developer had nailed down the width aspect but not the depth and that “This time, we would like consumers to be satisfied in both aspects.”
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