The Wii U is being accused of, at best, being a very moderate and incremental bump over the current generation of systems. Having already defended the Wii U’s power, Nintendo expressed its belief that the next generation of home consoles by Microsoft and Sony would probably not be much of generational leaps themselves, claiming that it wouldn’t ‘make much sense.’

“If they [Sony and Microsoft] decide to increase the spec numbers, will the consumers be able to realise the difference enough so that they can understand it’s much superior to today’s machine?” Iwata mused in an interview with The Telegraph.

Iwata expressed his worries that increased processing power would make game development for the PS4/Nextbox increasingly complicated, a sentiment that echoes his remarks from many years ago.

“If they beef up the processing power, that simply means much more work for software developers to take advantage of those spec numbers. So I have to ask the question if that type of differentiation really makes sense.” Of course, this same mentality was applied to the Wii versus the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, and look how that turned out for Nintendo.

Iwata was gracious enough to say that it was too early to comment either way, however:

“I think further arguments must wait until probably next year, when they have finalised and disclosed whatever they are thinking about for the next generation of consoles.”

Nintendo might be late to the DLC party but they aren’t taking it lightly. They are preparing a paid transaction system just like PSN, Xbox Live and Steam, which will make it easier for the 3DS and the upcoming Wii U to receive DLC by third-party publishers. This was revealed at a Q&A session at Nintendo’s Tokyo earnings briefing, where the CEO of Nintendo, Satoru Iwata put forth his plans.

He also went on the offensive against free-to- play games, which was undermining Nintendo’s premium content. Nintendo has been receiving a lot of competition from iOS and the likes, which offer cheap games to consumers.

He also mentioned that a lot of people go online with the 3DS compared to the DS. Nintendo has high hopes from the digital marketplace, and we hope it works out for them as they will have stiff competition in the future.

Source

“On the contrary,” he said, “we ourselves assume that our rival is everything consuming people’s interest, time and energy. If we were to consider one specific thing as our rival, we would do nothing but think of how to beat it.

“…Even if we ask customers what kind of games they want to play and develop one game as they requested, it may not always greatly excite them. Instead, we should develop what is beyond their imagination and let them say, ‘This is unexpectedly interesting,’ or ‘This is the very thing I have been wanting.’ We can say that our business is very unique.

“…it is more important for our unique business to always ask ourselves, and try to answer such questions as, ‘What does it mean to make people interested in something?’ ‘What is worth spending people’s time and energy on?’ Or ‘What do people find amusement in?’

“We would be glad if you understand that, as the basis, we are not conscious of any certain rivals,” he said.

On cloud computing, Iwata said, “With cloud computing, for example, customers would be irritated even by a slight delay in response after pressing a button. So, for what is suitable for cloud computing, we will take advantage of the technology in the future.

“It is also natural that we will align with a service provider of cloud computing, and not going through the trouble to develop our own facilities. Having said that, cloud computing would not conquer every field of entertainment because present telecommunication technologies inevitably involve a certain delay and limitation of transmission speed.

“We would employ Cloud Computing as far as it is useful,” he concluded.

Hmmm…. if only Microsoft and Sony could do that…

Speaking at an Investor’s Relations Q&A session last week at E3, Iwata ruled out the idea of Nintendo IPs ever appearing on mobile phones, or on any non Nintendo branded hardware for that matter.

“We think Nintendo is a company whose value is recognized by the way that we combine great software experiences with particular hardware capabilities that only we can offer. Therefore, my feeling is that offering our IP on other devices would have an adverse impact on the overall value of our company and at the same time I think that it’s not something that would add value to Nintendo.”

Certainly, Mr Iwata, and I don’t think anybody would begrudge you wanting to keep your IP’s to yourself. After all, it was Mario, Zelda, and Metroid that single handedly tided Nintendo over during the N64 and Gameube days.