Iwata: Wii Want Your Mom
Nintendo President Satoru Iwata (right) believes the Wii console could have the highest user rate of all consoles, but to achieve this the key will be to attract mothers and women in general to the console. More within...
In a new interview with Satoru Iwata, the Nintendo President talked to financial news publication Bloomberg.com about the challenge of expanding the video game audience—a point that Nintendo has been emphasizing for quite some time now.
Iwata stressed that mothers and women of all ages will be key to the success of the soon to be launched Wii console. "We want to appeal to mothers who don't want consoles in their living rooms, and to the elderly and to young women," he said.
Then, in one of the more humorous statements to come out of a video game executive, he added, "It's a challenge, like trying to sell cosmetics to men."
The Nintendo DS has been selling at a torrid pace in Japan, but Iwata is so confident in the Wii that he believes it has a good chance of outpacing the dual-screen handheld. "If we can do this, the Wii could break all the boundaries in terms of user rates for game consoles,'' he boasted.
It's clear that Nintendo is going on a hugely different path from its competition, but don't use the word "competition" when referring to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, Iwata said. "We are not battling Sony or Microsoft. Our enemy is consumer indifference to games," he explained.
In all, the Bloomberg report seemed like a glowing endorsement of the Wii and Nintendo's strategy, with analysts proclaiming that the console could propel Nintendo to the top again.
"Wii definitely could become the most popular console of all time,'' said Hirokazu Hamamura, president of research firm Enterbrain Inc., which also publishes Famitsu. "Non-gamers can see how fun it is just by looking at people playing it, and that's very different from the PS3 or Xbox 360."
Added Etsuko Tamura, an analyst with Mizuho Investors Securities, "Sony's PS3 is said to be too sophisticated for some overseas developers, which has led them to turn to the Wii to have products in time for Christmas."