Iwata: Bad reactions to new announcements are good
During a recent Investors Q&A session, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata has discussed his feelings on the negative reaction to the Wii Vitality Sensor, outlining that it’s a good sign, contrary to popular belief.
“When we make some new announcement and if there is no positive initial reaction from the market, I try to think of it as a good sign because that can be interpreted as people reacting to something groundbreaking.”
He goes on to say that “if the employees were always minding themselves to do whatever the market is requiring at any moment, and if they were always focusing on something we can sell right now for the short term, it would be very limiting. We are trying to think outside the box.”
Nintendo gets a lot of hate for doing just this, and I can’t help but feel it’s entirely undeserved. In the second statement especially, Iwata brings up a fantastic point: Nintendo is doing something groundbreaking that reaches many more people than video game have ever done in the past. They’re thinking outside the box and delivering in areas that other game developers haven’t even begun to think about yet, and they’re doing all of this while still delivering their core franchises to the gamers that have been with them for so long. I can’t think of any other company that has done that, nor of any other company that could.
