Iwata talks cloud services
Cloud technology is something that Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has commented on the past, but he was asked to discuss the topic once more during the Q&A portion of the company’s financial results briefing last week.
In short, Nintendo isn’t planning on using the cloud and smart devices in direct relation to its video game business. There is, however, interest in using them in other ways. Nintendo is currently “moving ahead with a variety of preparations.”
Iwata’s full comments:
First, in regard to smart devices, the advantage of cloud servers is always being connected to consumers through the Internet. Thus, we can do many things with that connection. Another advantage the cloud offers is that the processing capacity of our servers can be readily increased or decreased in accordance with a rise or fall in consumers, enabling us to run cost-efficient operations. Of course, there are possibilities in the game business for utilizing these merits of smart devices and cloud services. On the other hand, as was previously said, our aim of utilizing smart devices is to create even stronger ties with our consumers. As I have stated before, we draw the line at using the cloud and smart devices to directly carry out our video game business. Therefore, if you are asking whether we plan to directly carry out our video game business using the cloud and smart devices as we will with QOL, the answer is, “No.” If the question is whether we are interested in utilizing them, naturally the answer is, “Yes.” We are actively considering utilizing smart devices to create ties with our consumers and use those ties in the world of video games, as well as examining how we can deepen consumers’ interest in video games to increase the number of participants in our platforms. At present, we are moving ahead with a variety of preparations.
