Nintendo’s Satoru Iwata Speaks About A Lot
GS: There were a lot of skeptics when the Wii first launched, even amongst Nintendo fans.
SI: Well, we were doing all sorts of things that were way outside of the accepted mold for the industry. It was a series of battles against people saying, “But that doesn’t make any sense!”
GS: Were you confident you could pull it off?
SI: I would sound so cool if I could say, “Oh, I knew it all along,” but it is not necessarily so. [Laughs] It was more of a conviction that somebody needed to go there and push things in this new direction.
We knew that if games appealed to fewer people, the future was going to be bleak. And with video games being demonized by the public, it was hard to see how games could flourish in all that. So we knew we had to change it. We knew that to change that, we’d be playing to and reinforcing Nintendo’s strengths.
It’s not that the opinion of those with different perspectives weren’t convincing for us. With each suggestion, we thought through many things, but with each step along the way, we could feel the market changing bit by bit, and that is why we were able to keep going. Hearing stories about customers who seemed like they’d never touch a game scouring store shelves for a copy of Brain Age is what encouraged us.
Little reactions like that show up before the actual sales numbers start rolling in. Still, we didn’t know whether a major shift in those numbers would take months or years to achieve. I worked under the assumption that if five years went by and the world didn’t change, I could kiss my job good-bye. [Chuckles.]
GS: What are your plans for expanding into new regions?
