Nintendo on downplaying tech specs
Nintendo has always been coy when it comes to technical specs. We rarely see spec sheets from the company, and we often don’t see comments about what Nintendo’s systems can do from a technical perspective.
Last week, Nintendo senior managing director Genyo Takeda spoke with investors about how “Nintendo tries not to emphasize the raw technical specifications”, instead opting to place the focus “on how we can use technology to amplify the value of our entertainment offerings”.
Takeda said, “Whether a machine is powerful or not only has meaning in the context of whether that can express itself in terms of gameplay to consumers.”
Mr. Iwata just explained that Nintendo leads an integrated hardware-software business. To put it differently, combining technology with entertainment creates machines. Under such circumstances, Nintendo tries not to emphasize the raw technical specifications of our hardware. We have focused on how we can use technology to amplify the value of our entertainment offerings, and in this sense, technology for us is something that stays in the background. Therefore, I do not wish to make excuses for having so far failed to offer the “amplifier” that our consumers can regard as having true entertainment value. Whether a machine is powerful or not only has meaning in the context of whether that can express itself in terms of gameplay to consumers, and I therefore do not intend to go into fine detail about the specific numbers. I apologize for not directly answering your question, but it is my personal belief that explanations of such a nature have little relevance to consumers.
Rather than thinking differently between hardware and software, I would like to continue to use technology in order to amplify the overall entertainment value in ways that are easy to understand for our consumers, and the technologies we should investigate will be more and more different from in the past. It is not just the computational power of a computer that is important, but it is the way in which technology can connect with entertainment in ways that are easy for consumers to understand. It is my hope to communicate the value of the Wii U hardware with concrete examples with which consumers can feel, “Oh, so, this is it!”
