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Before Japan’s startup elite, Nintendo president talks innovation and the search for something new

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This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Osaka 2013. The highlight of day one at B Dash Camp in Osaka was the final session featuring Nintendo president Satoru Iwata. It’s unusual for him to join an open event like this, so this was a bit of a treat, especially following the social gaming session that took place earlier in the afternoon. Iwata started out with some slides to remind us that Nintendo started out as a card game company way back in 1889. He outlined how the company transitioned to TV games and then to consoles as a game platform. Nintendo is an old company, but always one that wants to make something new, he emphasized. When we talk about Nintendo we cannot ignore (former president) Hiroshi Yamauchi who just recently passed away. He always said that if you have failure, you don’t need to be too concerned. You always have good things and bad, and this reflects the history of Nintendo [1]. Iwata, as you might expect with so many folks from the mobile industry in attendance, really focused on his company’s longevity, innovation, and legacy of surprising the world with something entirely new. If…

nintendo-satoru-iwata-bdash
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Osaka 2013.

The highlight of day one at B Dash Camp in Osaka was the final session featuring Nintendo president Satoru Iwata. It’s unusual for him to join an open event like this, so this was a bit of a treat, especially following the social gaming session that took place earlier in the afternoon.

Iwata started out with some slides to remind us that Nintendo started out as a card game company way back in 1889. He outlined how the company transitioned to TV games and then to consoles as a game platform. Nintendo is an old company, but always one that wants to make something new, he emphasized.

When we talk about Nintendo we cannot ignore (former president) Hiroshi Yamauchi who just recently passed away. He always said that if you have failure, you don’t need to be too concerned. You always have good things and bad, and this reflects the history of Nintendo [1].

Iwata, as you might expect with so many folks from the mobile industry in attendance, really focused on his company’s longevity, innovation, and legacy of surprising the world with something entirely new.

If you do the same thing as others, it will wear you out. Nintendo is not good at competing so we always have to challenge [the status quo] by making something new, rather than competing in an existing market.

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Iwata left, Nobuo Sayama right

While fans are screaming out for the company to go the way of Sega and and produce games for our mobile devices, Nintendo has been a stubborn holdout. That was, of course, the elephant in the room during Iwata’s talk, with the final question of the Q&A session predictably asking if Nintendo would ever shake from its stance of refusing to produce games for hardware other than its own. Iwata’s response to that was predictably curt:

No one knows the future, but I don’t think that’s going to happen with Nintendo.

As our readers may recall from a few weeks back, I myself have been dreaming that someday soon Nintendo might make a Hail Mary pass by producing a DS Phone. From Iwata’s comments, that does not look to be a likely scenario – although he did leave the door open a crack to the possibility.

I confess, I’ve all but given up hope for the salvation of Nintendo. But at the same time, hearing Iwata describe his company as one that looks for something entirely new – well, that claim appeals to the nostalgic gamer in me, the one that has been three times captivated by the company’s innovations [2]. I’d love to think that the company could pull off a home run again, but the skeptic in me thinks Nintendo is no longer capable of such things.

And yet, Iwata still kept talking.

And it did not sound ridiculous:

It’s often called the ‘Blue Ocean Strategy’, looking for something that no one else is working on. When we created the DS, people said it was strange to have a dual display, and people said elderly people don’t play games. But they did. Opening the first door is when things are most interesting.

He went on to speak of the challenge they faced in pushing Pokemon abroad:

Will America accept cute monsters? No, they said. Some people even recommended to make Pikachu more muscular. If we followed their advice Pokemon would never have been the success that it was. Brain Training software (Brain Age) became a hit in Japan, and I proposed that we sell it globally. And even as I said that as the president, no one listened.

But actually, Brain Training did better in Europe than anywhere else, and Iwata rolled out a handy chart to show as much.

nintendo-brain-age

He went on to praise his company, explaining how motivated Nintendo staffers are. “It’s easy for our employees to see the benefits of the work they do”, he explained, “and when employees are excited, well, that’s the best possible state for a company.”

It’s all too easy to bash Nintendo for its stubbornness in the face of the smartphone revolution. I’ve done it, and I’ll probably continue to do it. But I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t also rooting for the company to pull off that last second miracle that turns the gaming industry on its head.

The giant is now the underdog, and I’m really not sure why, but I’m still rooting for them to do well.


  1. Do note that quotes in this article are taken from live translation during the event, and that Iwata’s talk was in Japanese. So it’s possible that quotes may not be entirely accurate or verbatim, but I think they are generally solid.  ↩

  2. When I say three times, I’m referring to the Nintendo Entertainment System, Gameboy, and the Nintendo DS. I didn’t buy a Wii, so I missed that train.  ↩

The announcement I wish Nintendo would make

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This morning I stumbled across M.G. Siegler’s post on the death of Nintendo, which he says has been “greatly under-exaggerated.” Like Siegler, I’m a fan of Nintendo. But I don’t think they’re completely dead. There is one final Hail Mary pass that I think Nintendo has to inevitably throw before completely tossing in the towel. And that’s the Nintendo Phone. Of course, this is the product that they should have launched back in 2009, when the iPod Touch was spared a camera upgrade in favor of positioning it as a gaming machine. I was a huge Nintendo DS fan at the time, and I remember noticing some clever homebrewers running VoIP applications on a Nintendo DS. It seemed to me back then that if Nintendo added phone capabilities to the DS, that in terms of pure function, they would be offering essentially the same device as Apple. Not as cool of course. But it would have been interesting. As we all know, things didn’t turn out that way. But is there still time? I mean, now that casual games have taken over the planet via the smartphone, doesn’t the world’s most experienced maker of casual games even have a chance…

This morning I stumbled across M.G. Siegler’s post on the death of Nintendo, which he says has been “greatly under-exaggerated.” Like Siegler, I’m a fan of Nintendo. But I don’t think they’re completely dead. There is one final Hail Mary pass that I think Nintendo has to inevitably throw before completely tossing in the towel. And that’s the Nintendo Phone.

Of course, this is the product that they should have launched back in 2009, when the iPod Touch was spared a camera upgrade in favor of positioning it as a gaming machine.

I was a huge Nintendo DS fan at the time, and I remember noticing some clever homebrewers running VoIP applications on a Nintendo DS. It seemed to me back then that if Nintendo added phone capabilities to the DS, that in terms of pure function, they would be offering essentially the same device as Apple. Not as cool of course. But it would have been interesting.

As we all know, things didn’t turn out that way.

But is there still time? I mean, now that casual games have taken over the planet via the smartphone, doesn’t the world’s most experienced maker of casual games even have a chance if they rolled out a phone right now?

And with that in mind, I went and drafted my dream ‘Nintendo phone’ announcement. As you do. In my head. It’s not real, so you’ve all been warned.


Nintendo unveils the DS phone, ‘Nintendo classic’ subscription plan, and Pokemon Glass™

Today Nintendo is proud to announce that it will be releasing the next evolution of its DS lineup, the Nintendo DS Phone™. The product comes via a partnership with Kyocera, a company already experienced in making a dual-screen mobile phone with its Kyocera Echo handset.

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata elaborated:

Both companies are headquartered in Kyoto, Japan, making this a natural partnership. We have heard our fans repeated demands to have our games made available for mobile, and this announcement is proof that we haven’t completely ignored them at all for years and years.

To ensure that fans hit the ground running with plenty of games when they first purchase our DS Phone™, Nintendo are making its entire back catalogue of classic games available for instant download as of today, as part of the ‘Nintendo Classic’ subscription plan. For just $1.99 per month, fans can get iconic games like Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda, Mario Kart, Final Fantasy, Metroid and hundreds more.

Never a company known to sadly stagnate, Nintendo has also completely refreshed its Pokemon franchise to once again take the lead as the world’s premier gaming company. By working with augmented reality pioneer Takehito Iguchi and his new company Telepathy, Nintendo has created Pokemon Glass™, a new geo-location game that lets you collect and train Pokemon that you find at different locations in the real world [1]. Telepathy recently raised $5 million to develop it’s wearable Google Glass-like technology.

Iwata added that he hopes that Pokemon Glass™ can spark tourism in Japan, with super rare localized Pokemon that can only be obtained by traveling to certain regions and cities, starting with the Tohoku region. Nintendo will also work with local travel agencies to develop informative in-game content around local landmarks where rare Pokemon can be obtained.

More games are set to be announced at the Tokyo Game Show this year, an event that Nintendo swears it will not skip this time.


  1. There’s actually a little bit of reality to this notion, as Iguchi-san hypothesized such a game when I interviewed him back in 2009.  ↩