Iwata tries to explain platform droughts

[gumby_trucker]

RolStoppable said:

gumby_trucker said:

What the hell Iwata??
Is there some kind of image of American gamers as people who only play 2-3 games a year extensively, and have no desire for anything else?

No, this just a case that demands a higher level of reading comprehension, because the translations of Nintendo's investor briefings aren't necessarily perfect. In the sentence in question it should read "the situation was..." due to the given context of the Wii's early life.

There really wasn't much noteworthy support for the Wii in Japan (ever), because Western publishers generally fail hard over there and the Japanese ones don't have the mantra of "let's port everything everywhere". In Japan the Wii was living and dying by Nintendo software, but the overseas markets had stuff like Guitar Hero which back then was a big deal.

On topic: I wish Iwata's solution to Nintendo's problem would be more along the lines of expanding the size of Nintendo to the point that they can carry their systems alone without any too long droughts. Placing all their bets on third party support has the potential to end up devastating for Nintendo.

Forget the second part for a moment. The main part of the statement: "the lack of software was extreme only in Japan" is what mostly bothered me. This is not true, and has never been true as far as I can remember.
I understand that Japan doesn't get FIFA and Tiger Woods and Guitar Hero and maybe also Lego games etc. but there are dozens of Japanese games that never saw release in the west, as well as games that were only released much much later, usually by a different company than the one publishing in Japan. Examples of these are Sky Crawlers, Fragile Dreams, Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom, OnePiece Unlimited Cruise and more. Just look at a list of Namco-Bandai games that never made it to the west for starters... There are also many games from other third party publishers, not to mention the infamous long list of Nintendo games everybody knows by heart already. And don't even get me started on WiiWare and VC in Japan...

Iwata probably means "lack of system sellers" or "lack of million sellers" or something similar when he refers to software, and the way it is explained here doesn't convince me that he believes niche games have a place in the west. This is why I referred to the perception of western gamers as people who only buy Madden or COD...  This line of thinking pisses me off because it gives me less confidence in Nintendo understanding what it means to provide a "Deeper and Wider experience" in the future.

The fact that earlier this year Iwata made a statement about Wii not seeing enough high-profile releases in Japan, and making a commitment to release at least one high quality retail game a month every month until the end of the year, while in the west I can't even think of a time where Wii had such consistent support from Nintendo, leads me to believe they are still as Japanese-centric as ever, and that they still believe western gamers can be satisfied with fewer games, as long as they are "blockbusters".