“Consumers who acquired information only through TV or other mass media in the past now get their information through smart devices or the Internet,” Iwata explained to those in attendance.
“With the growth of the Internet, PCs and smart devices, as well as social media that enables you to see easily what others are saying, have become such important methods with which people gather information and make judgements. The key aspect is that Nintendo would like to establish a firm channel on smart devices through which we can connect with consumers”
Iwata added that this approach would allow not only Nintendo, but also third-party developers on Nintendo platforms, to promote their games to potential consumers.
“However, we cannot expect consumers to activate our application every day if we only establish a channel that is solely dedicated to advertising,” Iwata said. “We would have to make efforts to provide a channel for consumers that makes them entertained, pleased and happy in order to have them use our application frequently. The application market for smart devices is already extremely competitive, so it is generally very difficult to have consumers activate a single application on a continual basis.”
As a result, Iwata says, the goal is to have these apps and games keep their users engaged over a long period of time.
“Once we have established such an environment, however, we will be able to dramatically change the relationship between Nintendo and consumers,” Iwata feels. “In addition, while we had no other choice but to use TV commercials in the past, we feel that adding such a new communication tool will be a cost-effective measure as a whole, so we are thinking about this issue in a holistic manner.”
“For example, currently it requires a huge amount of effort to port Wii software to Nintendo 3DS because not only their resolutions but also the methods of software development are entirely different,” says Iwata. “The same thing happens when we try to port Nintendo 3DS software to Wii U. If the transition of software from platform to platform can be made simpler, this will help solve the problem of game shortages in the launch periods of new platforms.”
“To cite a specific case, Apple is able to release smart devices with various form factors one after another because there is one way of programming adopted by all platforms. Apple has a common platform called iOS,” Iwata stated. “Another example is Android. Though there are various models, Android does not face software shortages because there is one common way of programming on the Android platform that works with various models. Nintendo platforms should be like those two examples.”
Iwata also shared that this initiative will begin with Nintendo’s next platform, and that Nintendo hope to take advantage of the Wii U architecture, and carry it forward.
“It of course does not mean that we are going to use exactly the same architecture as Wii U, but we are going to create a system that can absorb the Wii U architecture adequately,” Iwata clarified. “When this happens, home consoles and handheld devices will no longer be completely different, and they will become like brothers in a family of systems.
It seems theres some interesting ideas, especially the idea of a shared Os between console & handheld. Maybe its just me thinking something like thise but they could go a step further and just have a handheld you can connect to your TV and use as a console by hooking it up to the mains to power up & sync a controller to. When you wanna game on the go just leave the controller etc at home and game on the handheld. Mobile tech is getting more powerful by the day so its feasible, Nintendo haven't been about raw computational power for a while now anyway. Hell I'd buy something like from Nintendo What do you guys think? Interesting times ahead? or maybe a little worried/confused about what this talk entails?
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