As Nintendo plans to move forward, the company’s president is looking back.
And, president Satori Iwata said, it’s up to his team to make sure the same problems don’t happen with the next console, which will be unveiled in two months at the annual E3 Expo.
The original Wii was quite a success. There’s no doubt about that. However, sales of the system have began to quickly drop, and developer interest has diminished even more significantly.
“I now regret that we didn’t tie up with someone outside the company to market the Wii. If we had done that, the fate of the Wii might have been different,” said Iwata in a Reuters interview.
“Now I am aware that we should not rely too much on ourselves. You will see what I mean by this when we market the 3DS and the Wii in the future,” he conceded.
For example, the 3DS launched without any huge blockbuster titles from Nintendo. Instead, the most noteworthy launch title was a third-party publisher’s game, Street Fighter IV 3D. Iwata hopes that by giving some of the spotlight to other companies, the fate of its future consoles might be better than it was with the Wii.
The “Wii 2,” known internally at Nintendo as Project Cafe, will be revealed at E3 for the first time anywhere in the world.
