Iwata: We’re not going to see dedicated handheld gaming vanish

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata believes handheld gaming is not going to go away.

Iwata is bullish on handheld gaming, after all his company produces quite a few of them–and popular ones at that. Under threat from the smartphone boom, dedicated handhelds are under pressure to fight for people’s time, and many analysts have said that Nintendo needs to embrace this fast.

“I’m not saying there aren’t people out there who aren’t going to purchase a dedicated handheld device based on the availability and the fun factor in their smartphones,” he told Kotaku. “I’m not saying that that’s not true. I do want to say that there are still people buying our devices and that is also factual.”

“I think that consumers who are willing to pay money for a gaming experience are looking for something that is more rich and are willing to spend some of that valuable time on that experience. I don’t think we’re going to see the desire to have, again, rich and deep sort of gaming experiences – we’re not going to see that vanish. That’s not going to go away.”

I agree with him a bit but seeing the fate of the Playstation Vita, you can’t help but notice that people simply don’t care anymore.