Nearly 20 years ago, three household names in Nintendo gaming took a shot at drawing Kirby inside the official strategy guide for Kirby’s Adventures. Masahiro Sakurai, the game’s creator (and creator of the Super Smash Bros. series); Shigeru Miyamoto, who really needs no introduction, and Satoru Iwata, who doesn’t either, unless you don’t know who Nintendo’s current CEO is.
Sometimes console makers like to promise the world for their new gaming systems, making lofty claims about how awesome their launch lineups will be. Those claims are never true.
At a recent investor Q & A, Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata spoke quite frankly about the issues Nintendo is currently struggling with, freely admitting that Nintendo didn’t make enough effort to retain its core gaming audience. He also claimed this is something Nintendo is looking to rectify with the Wii U and the 3DS.
Last year? Man, last year sucked. Nintendo bled loads of cash. Sure, the Nintendo 3DS was neato, but the rollout was rocky. And the Wii? That just gathered dust in anticipation for the upcoming Wii U.
Later this month, Nintendo is releasing the Nintendo 3DS in South Korea. To mark the event, Nintendo’s South Korean branch held an online Nintendo Direct press conference.
Nintendo is doing everything it can to make buying downloadable content on the Wii U easy as pie. Since the Kyoto-based game maker has said on numerous occasions that its DLC will add to the experience, I’m not so worried about Nintendo’s approach. It’s the other game makers that concern me.
In Dec. 2011, a report surface claiming that Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto said he was retiring. Nintendo quickly commented, saying the report was a “misunderstanding” and “absolutely not true.” See, Shigeru Miyamoto is apparently always saying he’s going to retire.
Nintendo announced a bunch of actual news over the last few days — the release window for the Wii U, the Nintendo Network, a new Mario side-scroller for the 3DS — but Next Media Animation doesn’t care about any of that.
The Nintendo Network is the Kyoto-base game maker’s upcoming service that envisions digital game distribution and, most likely, downloadable content. Nintendo is outfitting the Wii U controller with tech that could radically change the way gamers shop.
