The NOA President gives his thoughts on the competition, third-party support, and the future of Nintendo's hardware.
In an interview with Industry Gamers, Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aimé gave his opinion on many industry-related topics.
On the subject of how Nintendo plans to attract third-party support at a time when many developers are seemingly reducing Wii development budgets, Reggie said, "First, as a platform holder our responsibility is to create a large installed base for developers to create content, to provide them with the tools and the insight to help them create great games, and to have in place a profit model that motivates them to create the content and reap the rewards. We've done that; global installed base is over 67 million for Wii and there are 120 million in the DS family. So there's a large installed base, an easy platform to develop for and a strong set of tools out there."
When asked if Nintendo truly cares about third-party titles on the Wii, Reggie responded by saying, "For us, it is important that third parties bring their very best content to our platform. You could say 'Why?' It's because... well, let me focus in on the West. There are 28 million Wiis out there in the marketplace. We know, based on our data, that we've got consumers from 5 to 95 playing on that platform. The fact of the matter is we know we create great content for younger consumers, we know we've got great content for more casual players, and we want fantastic content for that more active player who loves Metroid or Zelda but maybe also wants something like a BioShock 2 to play as well. And we also recognize that we don't create that type of content ourselves. We're not good at it and it's not a key focus area. So we want that content on our platform, so we have to court third-party developers and encourage them to make [those games], but it also has to be financially viable for them as well."
As he has stated in other recent interviews, Reggie re-iterated that HD visuals alone are not enough of a reason for Nintendo to release a new home console, and stated that he believes the PlayStation 3 will have difficulty with its new motion controller, the Playstation Move, because of the high cost associated with the product. He said that he had not had a chance to play with the Move controller, but agreed that it sounded like an interesting device.
When asked if Nintendo had any interest in bringing its intellectual property to a social gaming site like Facebook, Reggie stated that the company had no interest in doing that, but would continue to monitor that environment, and evaluate it going forward.
When asked whether the DSi XL was priced too high at just $10 below the price of the Wii, Reggie replied, "In Japan, where the DSi XL has fabulous momentum and is currently outselling the base DSi model and outselling it pretty substantially, the price point for the DSi XL is exactly the same price as the Wii home console."
You can read the full interview at Industry Gamers.