Iwata on internally developed products, acknowledges Nintendo’s weakness with networks
Nintendo has taken a fairly big step forward by implementing a one-code friend system for the 3DS. But there’s no question that the company still has much work to do when it comes to online functionality with their systems. Satoru Iwata discussed that issue at a financial results briefing last week, and addressed the topic of developing products internally.
The policy “Jimae-shugi” (doing things by one’s bootstraps) you mentioned has two aspects: it is a great honor to succeed in a business by making the best use of our own unique strengths, but on the other hand, it is a shame to fall behind the times clinging to it. I believe that it is the key to Nintendo, which develops both hardware and software in-house, to create new experiences which have been neither enjoyed nor requested by consumers, and let them say, “This is the very thing I have been wanting to play” once they have actually tried it. The more we depend on outside resources for this point, the more strength Nintendo will lose. It is vital for Nintendo to reinforce this point and cultivate developers inside the company. I hope that Nintendo is continuously considered as a company which is particularly good at such a thing, and I will make efforts for this.
On the other hand, it is not true that Nintendo is able to internally develop everything and keep up with the current pace of change. In fact, some of the software titles published by Nintendo are developed by outside developing companies, called “second-party developers” in this industry. There are already a lot of companies which receive various advice from Nintendo in the process of software development and whose products are sold under the brand of Nintendo, and for instance, I was working for one of such companies, HAL Laboratory, Inc., which developed “Kirby’s Dream Land” and “Super Smash Bros.” Considering the existence of such companies, Nintendo is not totally based on the policy “Jimae-shugi.”
In the field of networks in particular, however, I admit that we cannot do business in pace with the changes in the world and the requests from consumers only within our company and with development companies we have long been in touch with. I am not sure which term suits us as collaborations for this purpose, M&A or partnership. Anyway, I feel that we would spoil the party in a negative way if “we sticked to create everything by ourselves” based on the policy “Jimae-shugi,” and eventually it would make our business slow.
In slight connection with the question about Wii’s concept before, honestly speaking, Wii’s future could have been different if Nintendo had made better partnerships with outside companies in the field of network services at the early stages of the penetration of Wii. In other words, Nintendo might have been a little obsessed with the policy “Jimae-shugi” at that time. Although we have already put ourselves back on track, we would like to clearly differentiate what is our true strength from what we can basically do by ourselves but can be done better by more skillful outside specialists in order not to fall into that trap again. You may be aware of some features which I am implying now in relation to the future developments of Nintendo 3DS and Wii’s successor system that we announced yesterday. I am sorry I cannot say anything more specific today.
