Nintendo gained 1000EXP, what? Nintendo's evolving! Duh, duh dun duh dun duh duh duh! Your Nintendo became a Super Nintendo!

Of course he would say that, he's a business man, he wouldn't want to speak poorly about his company so he said that the Wii U would not sell as well as the Wii and he was misinterpreted. However, in my opinion, it's pretty hard to misinterpret "won't sell as well" and "is too similar to" so I would say the original interpretation was right. We can't interpret it ourselves, but I think he said what he meant in that first quote, and that he changed it up during that follow up interview so that Nintendo as a whole would not look as bad. It happens all of the time and is simply a business move. And I repeat, I like where he is going with the company.

You can't just make up what you want. He was misquoted and he explained what he said in detail. You can pretend that he's lying, but your information if confirmed false by its source. It's incorrect and unusable. It's infactual. There is no truth to it. According to him, he never said it was "too similar to the Wii"  or that it "wouldn't sell" at all. It was misquoted. They said he said things he didn't say. They put words in his mouth. That's what a mis-quote is.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/olliebarder/2015/12/03/nintendo-president-tatsumi-kimishima-apparently-didnt-say-the-wii-u-would-fail/#2715e4857a0b7938f093222b

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In a new interview, the current president of Nintendo Tatsumi Kimishima claims he was misquoted by Nikkei when he said that the Wii U would fail.

As he explains, “The Nikkei reporter’s question to me was ‘The Wii U is not selling at this point in its lifetime as well as the Wii was at the same time. Why is that?’” says Kimishima. “And my answer was that the Wii at this point has sold over 100 million units worldwide, and even through there are people saying ‘Hey, since the Wii was so successful, Wii U is also going to be successful and it’s also going to sell like wildfire as well,’ I looked at that global install base and said that it might not sell as well. That was my response. Not that it wouldn’t sell, but that it would be more difficult because of the install base of the Wii itself.”

“The point that I was trying to get across was that Wii has sold so much and is being played by so many people, it’s not going to be easy to make them leave that and come to the next system. That was my only point, that it was a difficult task for us to bring those consumers from Wii to Wii U. But unfortunately it doesn’t look like my message got across clearly.”

He could have been misquoted during this interview, he could have been misquoted every time he has spoken. We don't know, we don't speak Japanese, we go by what the media reports. So as I said, of course he's going to backtrack, I'm not taking one articles word over anothers when there were weeks in between where he could have corrected it. He never did, not until another interview came up. I'm not saying he's a liar, but I can tell you this happens a lot with people who DO speak our language. They let something slip, and then they try and cover it up, it's not any different in this case. He doesn't want to be quoted speaking negatively about his company, so he claimed misquote. Not a big deal, I just believe the original over the "correction"

Looks like they're evolving indeed.

Fresh blood is what made Splatoon possible in the first place, so I hope they let new staff influence them positively.

I agree, people see what they want (myself included). The game plan for the NeXt generation was already set years ago. QOL, NX, My Nintendo and My Nintendo are business decisions made during Iwata's presidency (also it isn't solely the CEO decision since whole board contributes).

Same thing happened yesterday when people began jumping into conclusions from the QOL quotes, saying it's vaporware, etc.
http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=7749980

You should also be careful with the translations in the second post. The official translation will be provided by Nintendo.

Fresh ideas is nice to have.. so hopefully this works out well for them

The official Nintendo translation is finally live. You can find it here:

https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/library/events/160203qa/index.html

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Some fun stuff:

Q4

We have made a number of changes to our corporate structure to gear up for our new ventures. For example, (as I have described before,) where development was split between handheld and home console divisions in the past, we have unified these activities for both hardware and software development, and the exciting new ideas coming from development are evidence of the progress being made as a result of that unification.

To achieve Nintendo-like profits, one important factor will be establishing a solid launch for our NX and smart device businesses. I believe the key to doing this is to allocate our resources appropriately to proceed with hardware and software development on schedule and deliver our products to our consumers in a timely manner.

Q5

[...] is our mission to increase the number of people who have access to Nintendo IP. For example, due to changes in our industry, the proportion of young consumers who are first experiencing games on our systems has been falling. We want to have everyone become familiar with our IP by reaching as many people as possible from an early age within their daily lives. Our long-term strategy is to spark our consumers' interest in playing Nintendo game systems and encouraging continued growth of our games business.

Q6

When I became president, I stated that my role was to continue to proceed on the course that I helped to set with President Iwata and the rest of the management at that time. The ideas of our young employees are also key to our ability to transition to the next generation and to continue to produce exciting ideas. It is important to structure our organization so that these young people can take active roles. We have worked to establish such an organization; one that will allow our employees to reach their full potential in many different areas. It may be difficult to see from outside of the company, but we have made major changes to our organization. For example, our game developers have not had much of a public presence in the past, but we would like to create more and more opportunities for you to get to know them in the future.

As for business strategy, the hardware-software integrated business will remain the core of our game business, but we ensure that we will also expand this to include smart device activity and fuse these businesses into a synergistic whole. “My Nintendo” is a crucial part of this strategy as well. We seek to deepen our relationship with our consumers by having them join the “My Nintendo” program.

What did you find interesting?

So basically, you're claiming that Nikkei are incapable of getting it wrong, that it's more plausible that the new President of Nintendo went out there and said something bad about the previous president despite Japan's culture pretty much making such talk entirely unacceptable, rather than that Nikkei incorrectly interpreted what Kimishima was saying?

Kimishima's explanation sounds perfectly believable - he said that he was aware of the likelihood of the Wii U not selling as well as the Wii, and they interpreted that to mean that he saw something wrong with the Wii U... but his actual view was that the Wii was so popular, it would be hard to get people to shift away from it. Even if he believed otherwise, there's just no way he'd actually say something in an interview that suggested something wrong with what Iwata did.

Some hints that NX is launching this year.

-The previous and current fiscal years have been a period of preparation to launch a number of new endeavors, such as NX development..
-The question was to pick one area with which we will be able to achieve Nintendo-like profits, but I would like to suggest two areas. One area is our NX business, and another is our business for smart devices. I believe that keeping these two endeavors on track will be key to achieving Nintendo-like profits.
-To achieve Nintendo-like profits, one important factor will be establishing a solid launch for our NX and smart device businesses. I believe the key to doing this is to allocate our resources appropriately to proceed with hardware and software development on schedule and deliver our products to our consumers in a timely manner.
-As for new businesses, we will present further information when we go into details about our forecasts for the next fiscal year. We do not plan to speak about NX today. We continue development and planning efforts for NX in preparation for launch, so it will require additional investment.


https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/library/events/160203qa/index.html