Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo, was being quite cute and elusive in his remarks made to thestreet.com concerning the price point of the Wii. In his efforts, he also managed to throw a well placed barb against competitor Sony and undoubtedly received some chuckles.wata said: “Sorry, but give us more time before making the announcement. Of course, it’s going to be an affordable price point. If we put the PS3 as the standard price point, any price point is going to be affordable."
He,s quite the comedian, that Iwata.
Iwata then went on to continue his stance that Nintendo has not forsaken the core gaming crowd in favor of reaching the general non-gaming public by stating:"If we had not shown the Legend of Zelda or if we had not shown the Red Steel during the [E3] briefing …then I’m afraid that people might have misunderstood Nintendo’s [motives]. If all they had seen was Wii Sports or something like that, people [might] say, ‘Oh, Nintendo has already lost interest toward the games for the serious gamer. The fact of the matter is it’s not the case. By taking advantage of the unique controller and very unique play style of Wii, we will not only invite the newcomers but also excite the existing gamers. Now that’s the kind of message we really wanted to deliver."Iwata,s clarification of Nintendo,s intentions are most likely related to comments made by other Nintendo officials who stated that it was the intension of the company to go after the non-gaming public while forgetting the core gamer. Iwata said: "So, what we are focusing upon is not only the current gamers, but also those who are not playing with video games at all. That is our goal, so that’s why we are not caring so much about our competition with Sony or with Microsoft. We do not care if we can [beat] Sony or if we can [beat] Microsoft or if we can win in the current market-share battle in the same arena at all. That’s not our focus. Our focus is whether or not we can increase the game population."
And of course, in spite of Iwata,s denial of wanting to beat the competition, something tells us that he wouldn,t be totally against beating the pants off of Sony or Microsoft.
