One thing you can say for Nintendo: they are not easily deterred. Even as people scoff at the notion of introducing new hardware to the market, Nintendo’s president maintains confident in their decision.
For those unaware, Nintendo recently announced it would be bringing its hardware to several “emerging markets,” yet would not be selling the 3DS or Wii U (but instead develop new systems). Satoru Iwata touted this move as part of a “clear idea” they have moving forward. “Once we launch a new platform,” he says “we naturally start to prepare for the next one. As it takes several years to develop a single platform, if you ask us whether we are preparing for our next system, then the correct response will be that we are always developing new hardware.”
While this strategy makes perfect sense under normal circumstance (like when you’re succeeding in the sales department) someone at Nintendo apparently forgot that their last piece of gaming tech cost them almost half a billion dollars in 2013. Iwata still has faith however, that it may pull out of its nose dive, suggesting that a few big hits could make all the difference. “The fate of a video game system is often influenced greatly by the introduction of a single title…Game Boy had been showing slow growth…But the Pokémon game singlehandedly changed the landscape of the system, which then started to show the strongest sales in the lifecycle of the system.”
We’ll continue to monitor the state of affairs regarding the Wii U and bring you more on Nintendo’s new system developments as they break.