WiiNintendo

In an interview with Japanese site Yukan Fuji,  Satoru Iwata (Nintendo’s president) gave his thoughts on the company’s success in the previous year and their strategy for 2008.

In 2007, Nintendo’s stock price rose from 30,000 yen to, at one point, 70,000. When this was mentioned, Iwata replied: “Thanks to everyone, last year was a good year. The Nintendo DS crossed the 20,000,000 mark, which has been called the limit for game hardware sales. We put in a lot of effort, but we also had a stronger than expected tail wind”. He continues, saying that this level of success was unexpected. “To say ‘we expected it to sell’ would be vain. If we had known the Wii and DS would expand so dramatically in such a short time, we wouldn’t have had shortages, nor would we have had to raise our financial forecasts”.

Iwata is disappointed with suggestions that hardware shortages are part of the company’s strategy, as has been put forward by some people. “[When I see those types of articles], I honestly feel sad,” he said. “Game machine production amounts are set about half a year in advance, so they cannot be easily changed. The concept of the Wii is ‘a machine that makes people who play it smile.’ We wouldn’t use a strategy that is at odds with smiling. Getting as many people as possible to show us their smiles when playing a Nintendo game — that’s the energy source that drives us”.

Asked for insight into their goals for 2008, he said “This year we will release a new system. That is, of course, a joke. Our goal is to show our ‘answer’ to how to make sure the game population that has increased through the Wii and DS doesn’t end as a short-lived boom. Even with the DS, there are still things left to do”.

“Things grow bad the moment they’re left in the same position,” Iwata said. “In particular, people can grow tired of entertainment such as games, so in order to make sure the consumers who took up the DS and Wii don’t loose interest, new ideas like Wii Fit will become essential from here on out. This year, we’ll try a number of things to keep the game population expansion continuing”.

The interviewer finished off, noting that Iwata was “positive as usual”. “Yes, I am super positive”, he replied with laughter. “In this business (being a company president) if you’re not positive, you’ll immediately get weakened and won’t be able to continue. Also, if I didn’t have a positive outlook, I definitely wouldn’t be able to say something like ‘expand the gaming population’”.

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