Iwata Talks Wii, DS and How Miyamoto 'Is Not God'

Nintendo today provided the transcript of a fiscal Q&A with Nintendo President and CEO Satoru Iwata. When asked about delays in certain product launches and the bugginess of certain hardware, the executive answered frankly.

"Honestly speaking, whether entertainment software is good enough or not cannot be told until development nears completion," said Iwata. "Even amongst the software created by Shigeru Miyamoto of Nintendo, some have turned out to be entertaining enough in line with the original development concept while some turned out to be lacking something in the end."

"One of the reasons why Miyamoto is highly praised is because of his ability to stop, rethink about, and fix how he can convey the appeal of a software when he finds out during the latter phase of development that the software will not be good enough," he continued. "This is why the games he has worked on have a high batting average to produce big hits. However, he is not God and even Miyamoto himself cannot hit the mark every time nor always predict how long it takes to complete development. I believe my management job is to set parameters of the development timeframe, and with this uncertainty in mind, to plan our product launch timings without too much time between each one, but it is not easy to get this down perfectly."

Turning to the subject of price cuts, Iwata addressed how the matter has become a complex global issue. "I have never said that cutting the suggested retail price is not in the cards," he said. "However, price cuts in one country can certainly affect other countries. For example, when you say that we should cut the price in Japan due to the current domestic market situation, once the suggested retail price is cut in Japan, people outside Japan will anticipate the same around the world."

"10 or 15 years ago, each country could decide its own price policy in the video game market, as you know, however, price policy has become a global subject in the recent years. So, any price policy must be considered with the aim to maximize our global business. Because of this, we do not think just in terms of Japan," he added. "Also, while the price cut is said to surely increase demand, it must be clear from a variety of analysis so far that the effect cannot last very long. Accordingly, if we really do enact a price cut, it must be exactly when it can maximize the business. At least for now, I have no specific ideas about the price cut at all."

Turning to the subject of the Wii, Iwata was queried about the struggles of third-party software on the Wii. The executive immediately tried to discourage comparisons made between the DS' situation and the Wii. "It often takes longer to develop software for home console than for a portable system. Another thing is that home console software development teams of third parties were more focused on making software for other companies systems until quite recently, and this fact must be rather obvious to you too. You may want to contact third party publishers for any additional background, but what I can tell you today are these two differences."

"Nintendo thought that the situation would change in about two years after launch," he added. "While our assumption turned out to be correct with the portable system, it did not progress as we anticipated for the domestic home console market. Fortunately, the U.S. and Europe are showing completely different scenarios in this regard. With the current domestic situation as key leanings, we would like to take more time to study what we need to do for the future."