For those worried that the Nintendo NX might end up being just a retread of what we’ve seen in the Wii or the Wii U, the company’s president wants to put your mind at ease. While the Wii actually had quite a bit of success as a console that changed the way things were done (both Microsoft and Sony took steps to emulate the motion controls technology) the Wii U was a piece of hardware that looked and sounded cool, but fell quite short when it came to competing against the new big boys on the block.
Nintendo used to be the king of the consoles but it has fallen off in the last decade and is now a distant third behind Sony and Microsoft. In order to climb back into the ring, it’s clear that Nintendo understands it needs to reinvent what its consoles are understood to be able to do. The company’s brand new president, Tatsumi Kimishima, has recently underlined that sentiment in an interview with Time magazine.
“I can assure you we’re not building the next version of Wii or Wii U. It’s something unique and different. It’s something where we have to move away from those platforms in order to make it something that will appeal to our consumer base.” He told the magazine. The president explained one of the reasons this console won’t have anything to do with the last two generations is because of how hard it’s been to explain the differences between the Wii and the Wii U to the fanbase. Perhaps Nintendo will have better success if it can simply set the NX, or whatever its final name is going to be, apart from the Wii branding. We’ll have to wait and see.
