Iwata talks Wii faults and fixing issues with Wii U, third-parties advancing shooter genre
Satoru Iwata has admitted two significant faults with the Wii. First, he acknowledged that the console wasn’t able to meet the needs of hardcore gamers. And, second, Iwata noted that Nintendo wasn’t able to provide an experience that consumers could view on an HD television.
This was in response to a comment posed to the Nintendo president that the Wii U appears to be appealing more to hardcore gamer and first-person shooters. He explained that, this time around, the Wii U is HD ready and that it should be “be as powerful as any other console”. Also noteworthy, Iwata said that third-party publishers have been open to advancing the shooter genre thanks to the new controller.
Iwata’s full response:
In the case of the original Wii, our intent was to extend the gaming population, but of course we needed to think about how we were going to motivate non-gamers to play with video games, so we came up with Wii Sports and Wii Fit, as well as how the Wii system was designed.
For example, in the case of our products, approximately 50 percent of our users are a female audience, the other platforms are around 30 percent.
So, the Wii has already achieved very impressive things, but there were two things we were not able to realize: We could not keep up with the hardcore gamers and the Wii original was not compatible with HDTVs.
This time around, Wii U is compatible with HDTV, so we now expect the Wii console to be as powerful as any other console and all the necessary buttons are there [Iwata holds the new controller and demonstrates its use].
When we approached the third-party publishers to tell them about the Wii U, all the publishers volunteered to make advancements in the field of shooting games that they are very good at. For example, ordinarily when you are playing a shooter type of game, your main TV screen is the battlefield; however, oftentimes you have to open a new window to select items or weapons or to see the entire map.
But you don’t have to do that anymore with Wii U because you’ll have a screen that will show you that information.
But this is just one of the roles. It will also have another mission, as well. By having another screen, we believe it will pave a new way in the opposite direction to attract the non-gamers today. It’s no denying that we’ve expanded the so-called gaming population, but there’s still a number of people that have yet to be interested in the Wii at all, even after we introduced them to such applications as Wii Sports and Wii Fit.
Even those people, we want them to utilize Wii U one way or another.
For example, there’s video chat or they may want to do Web browsing while watching the screen on the big TV and managing operations with the screen in your hands.
For the past decade or so, many attempts have been made to link the TV and the Internet, but so far, nothing has been popular. So, the PC is still the strongest device to take advantage of the Internet, and now increasingly smartphones and tablets.
The ordinary TV sets in the household are located 10 feet away from yourself, and so it’s not the optimal solution to see the small letters of the Internet. You may also have problems with inputing and browsing.
On the other hand, when you look at this controller, it’s one foot away from your eyes — it has almost the same distance of the PC and other smartphones. In other words, this device is capable of handling such activities for you to input the letters in the palm of your hands.
In the future, if the TV and Internet can be used together, the TV will have a remote with a screen — and it will look very similar to how the Wii U controller is today.
