Microsoft’s Shane Kim was recently asked what he thought of Nintendo. Here’s what he had to say:

“…In general, I applaud Nintendo for their success. I think what they’re doing is very important. They’re trying to bring more people into the industry and — objectively speaking — I think it’s Nintendo and Microsoft that are really generating the excitement for the industry. And that’s important for the industry. The fact that Nintendo and Wii have launched strong and that people who are not traditional gamers find excitement in the video game industry is a great thing for the business, and for us as well, since we’re going to compete for that customer segment as well. I don’t view Nintendo as a direct competitor, simply because they’re not trying to do the same things as we are on the higher end — they don’t have the same online aspirations as we do — but Sony and Microsoft really need to compete for that customer segment if we want to get to the mass market and win this generation. Nintendo’s certainly done a lot of great things. That’s more what I think of as what we need to do a better job of as we go after that.”

– Shane Kim, Microsoft Game Studios corporate vice president

This is quite funny to me.  Now that Nintendo is bringing more potential consumers into the gaming industry (which is what they said they were going to do), Microsoft is going to try and appeal to that whole new segment of potential gamers.

Good luck Microsoft, that ‘new segment’ is a new breed who isn’t impressed by graphics alone.

Source: Gamasutra