Topic: Iwata Aims to Take Nintendo Beyond Games

[Aaron Brown]

"Nintendo is a company that can do whatever it wants."

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/37293/iwata-aims-to-take-nintendo-beyond-games

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata intends to take Nintendo beyond video games and the public's perception of the company, he stated in an an interview with Diamond.jp.

Iwata was asked to elaborate on Nintendo's January statements, regarding the Quality of Life platform and their desire to extend entertainment.

"A lot of people around the world think Nintendo is solely a company that makes video games, and I believe more and more of our own employees have started thinking in this way," Iwata commented. "...Even though we won't chance the fact that our focus is on video games, I felt the need to take that occasion to state that Nintendo is a company that can do whatever it wants."

Iwata was also remarked on similar thoughts of his predecessor, Hiroshi Yamauchi. "Yamauchi always said 'Nintendo is an entertainment company and should never be anything else', but he didn't necessarily think 'entertainment equals video games'."

No products or services were clarified, leaving room for imagination on both the direction that Iwata aims Nintendo to head in the entertainment business, and also their Quality of Life platform.

[Enner]

Cue snarky "Nintendo is a company that can do whatever it wants, except ...!" in 3... 2... 1....


Hard to know what these philosophical comments mean for the company without products that align with it. The internet will have a field day, though.

[UncleBob]

Cue snarky "Nintendo is a company that can do whatever it wants, except ...!" in 3... 2... 1....

No, I'm sure the snarky "Iwata should be fired and the company should be turned over to someone who knows what they're doing.  Like Michael Pachter or something." will start first.

[Soren]

You're both wrong. The snarky "this just proves the Wii U is an even worse failure than the Virtual Boy and will be on the bargain bin by (insert totally unrealistic date here)" will be the one to start first.

[MagicCow64]

Hm. This would seem to reinforce a feeling I've had that Nintendo is taking a good hard look at the dedicated console space and not seeing anything good. Diversify to avoid putting all of their eggs in a shrinking basket.

[Shaymin]

Clearly an attempt to diversify so they can afford to lose a bunch of money on a successor to the WiiU that has 8GB of DDR24 RAM and 9001GFLOP processor that launches this fall.

[leahsdad]

Argh....this can't be good, can it?

[BlackNMild2k1]

Better late than never. But when you have late reaction, you tend to take the hit.

[Shaymin]

In all seriousness, this is probably a mistranslation. Or at least, that's what our former Japanese correspondent is saying on Twitter right now.

Found it, so Siliconera translated this: "一度「任天堂はどんなことをやっていい会社なのか」ということを、今、言葉にする必要があると思ったんです。" into "Nintendo ..can do whatever they want'."

[/size]That's more like "We needed to go back and ask ourselves - 'what kind of things can we do'?" Then explains about the core concept being fun.

[/color][/size]The whole freakin' article he's saying that what's important is that they focus on 'fun', regardless of whether it's games or not.[/color]

/mic drop

[ShyGuy]

Maybe they will get into console based TV Shows like Microsoft for the Xbox One.

[Enner]

From @Ish_Siliconera:

@gypsyOtoko Thanks for pointing this out. We missed the last portion of Iwata's quote somehow, which is what resulted in that bit being off.

@gypsyOtoko The article's been updated to reflect the change now.

@gypsyOtoko This is the kind of screw-up that we try to avoid, but sometimes mistakes happen. Thanks once again. We do appreciate it.

Crisis averted?

The updated article:
[Update: It has been pointed out that there's been a slight mis-translation on Iwata's quote asking what Nintendo should be doing. The original text read "任天堂はどんなことをやっていい会社なのか" to which we missed the last part of "なのか," and resulted in the translation of "Nintendo can do whatever they want". This has been corrected, and we truly apologize for the error.]
Read more at http://www.siliconera.com/2014/04/28/need-redefine-nintendo-must-says-satoru-iwata/#RHgQEPOJ0XJsoeFU.99

[the asylum]

Well whatever they go into next, at least it isn't their worst business venture. Wasn't Nintendo a chain of brothels back in the 60s?

[leahsdad]

From @Ish_Siliconera:

@gypsyOtoko Thanks for pointing this out. We missed the last portion of Iwata's quote somehow, which is what resulted in that bit being off.

@gypsyOtoko The article's been updated to reflect the change now.

@gypsyOtoko This is the kind of screw-up that we try to avoid, but sometimes mistakes happen. Thanks once again. We do appreciate it.

Crisis averted?

The updated article:
[Update: It has been pointed out that there's been a slight mis-translation on Iwata's quote asking what Nintendo should be doing. The original text read "任天堂はどんなことをやっていい会社なのか" to which we missed the last part of "なのか," and resulted in the translation of "Nintendo can do whatever they want". This has been corrected, and we truly apologize for the error.]
Read more at http://www.siliconera.com/2014/04/28/need-redefine-nintendo-must-says-satoru-iwata/#RHgQEPOJ0XJsoeFU.99

Well, that's different now.

For a minute there, I was filled with visions of a Nintendo-pocalypse.   Where Nintendo no longer makes games.   Where our only gaming choices are MMO Shooter A, or MMO Shooter B.  The survivors would envy the dead.

[broodwars]

Yes, Nintendo needs to redefine themselves. I just have no faith whatsoever that Iwata is the man to lead Nintendo to that point.  The more he keeps going on about this whole "Quality of Life" B.S., the more worrisome Nintendo's future as a game platform starts to sound. Well, we'll see in June if they're having their E3 presence via Direct again this year because they knew they'd get laughed off the stage...or if this truly is the thing that will save Iwata's job.

[BlackNMild2k1]

They should start with a much more than capable entertainment box that can be expanded upon with software and wireless hardware (inclding, but not limited to this QoL stuff), adding streaming channels to take on things like Roku and Chromecast, actually use it's built-in features to it's advantage, like system wide videochat, real multi-tasking with the gamepad (i.e. doing something other than what is on the main screen, Like netflix on TV, whiie internet or VC game is on gamepad).

I don't know what Iwata has planned for Quality of Life stuff, but it would help if they helped realize the potential of their current business venture before they start expanding into other business arena's.
and considering they seem to already be resource starved for gaming, I can only imagine how many less games we will now be receiving now that Nintendo has hit's attention split.

[Ian Sane]

Glad to hear that "Nintendo can do whatever they want" is a mistranslation because, man, that is an ironic statement.

I fear that all this Quality of Life nonsense is Nintendo easing out of videogames.  They don't learn, they don't change.  They don't look at the situation as "boy we fucked up" but more "well I guess videogames aren't a thing that sells anymore".  When the Wii was new Iwata was saying all sorts of borderline delusional things about people not buying games anymore and I interpreted as "people don't buy OUR games anymore and we don't want to fix any of the stupid things we're doing that turned customers off so we'll go after a new audience that doesn't know better where we can continue doing the same stupid things and thus never admit we were wrong and have no self-improvement of any sort."  Nintendo needs to pull their heads out of their asses to get back with videogames but that's hard and it involves admitting mistakes and Nintendo doesn't do either of those things so, **** it, we'll just write off this videogames thing and try to find another audience that we hope won't notice what stubborn morons we are.

[Mop it up]

I predict that the first posts will predict negative comments.

[Ceric]

Nintendo could go back to some Lego Clones.  Game Cards.  Love Hotels. Traditional Games.  Move into something totally new like the did in Videogames in the first place.

[BlackNMild2k1]

what if they combine Love Hotels and VR Gaming? it would be an extremely niche market outside of Japan, but in Japan... WHOOO BOY.
Not gonna solve that baby making problem they got goin on over there, but they sure will be able to capitalize on it.

[nickmitch]

I bet Nintendo could put out some fun cartoons/movies.  That would be fun.

It'd be nice to see Nintendo supplement its income by diversifying it products.  Sony and MS can (or could?) afford to take bigger risks with videogame hardware.