Nintendo hoping to “enrich” the VC lineup
Nintendo’s Virtual Console has been disappointing, to say the least. Releases continue to trickle out very slowly, with some weeks seeing the absence of new classic games entirely.
With any luck, the situation will improve in the future. Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said during an investors Q&A briefing several days ago that the company has been unable “to take full advantage of our assets yet, so we would like to enrich our Virtual Console lineup.” Iwata added, “As the ability to digitally offer our products has given us greater flexibility in offering new propositions to our consumers, we should naturally consider these possibilities in the future.”
In terms of taking greater advantage of our previous assets, I feel that there are two points to consider. As we first began to do on Wii, one method would be to release games for our previous consoles, such as Nintendo Entertainment System or Super Nintendo Entertainment System, on other Nintendo consoles as Virtual Console games. While Wii U and Nintendo 3DS already offer Virtual Console software, I feel that we have not been able to take full advantage of our assets yet, so we would like to enrich our Virtual Console lineup. As the ability to digitally offer our products has given us greater flexibility in offering new propositions to our consumers, we should naturally consider these possibilities in the future. The other point is, as you mentioned, whether we should release our games on smart devices. At the moment, however, we believe a more balanced approach would be to use our content to increase the value of our hardware as opposed to distributing it on smart devices, and therefore, we have no plans to release Nintendo content on smart devices.
