Nintendo's President Hopes To Avoid 'Return to Arrogance'

Today Newsweek's N'Gai Croal has up an interview originally held back at E3, speaking with current President of Nintendo Satoru Iwata. The piece is an interesting look inside one of the top minds at a company that has experienced unprecedented success in the last year. In the interview, Iwata states that one of his most important tasks right now is to avoid allowing the company to appear arrogant. Just because people now assume Nintendo will succeed, he needs to make sure that's not the company's view as well. "This time, we were very lucky and very fortunate that people were accepting and positive about the introduction of the Wii Balance Board and the Wii Zapper. Now, what we have to do, what's very important for us is to make sure that when those products are actually launched, we not only meet their expectations, but we surpass them so there's that gap--we thought it was going to be this, when actually it's here. We need to create that buzz. We need to create that word of mouth and that's our challenge."

Re:Memo to all third-party developers:

[niola]

Exactly! All you have to say is 10NES [wikipedia.org] to know how hardcore Nintendo was at controlling things

Re:Memo to all third-party developers:

[Opportunist]

Hoo, boy, you haven't been playing in the 80s if you consider the junk made by EA true crap. EA games may keep you interested for 2 weeks or so, but that's at least 2 weeks of entertainment you get for your 60 bucks.

In the 80s, there were games that didn't provide 2 hours of entertainment for that money.

Re:Memo to all third-party developers:

[Cecil]

No, he's right. Nintendo's 10NES was restricting users as well, the only difference is that there was that the third party is the one who dealt with getting around the problem, not the users. With homebrew games today, the fundamental problem is very similar, it's just that the third party developers are users themselves and no longer have the means required to get around the DRM. As a result it is the users who are now expected to get around the protections (by installing mod chips in their own consoles), and it is now suddenly seen as restricting users rights to play unlicensed games, even though it is the exact same problem at its core.

Really, it has always been about restricting users rights to play unlicensed games with their own hardware, the only difference is which party has been forced to work around the DRM. Used to be the third-party developers, now it's the users. It's equally unfair, either way.