Nintendo targets developing markets with new hardware
Nintendo has announced it plans to release new games hardware, with the intention of helping the company expand into new and developing territories.
The last few years haven't been easy for Nintendo, with the Japanese games company struggling to repeat the success of the Wii console with its successor, the Wii U. The result has been operating losses for the third year running and President Satoru Iwata cutting his own salary in half. Yet the gaming giant is planning a new route out of the financial doldrums -- tapping into the growing economic power of emerging markets by releasing regionally specific hardware.
Iwata told Reuters that Nintendo plans to develop both hardware for players in lower income countries, and software better suited to new audiences with less gaming experience.
With China having recently lifted its ban on foreign games consoles, the country is no doubt a prime candidate for Iwata's ambitions, though he noted "we think the Chinese market has a lot of potential, but I don't think the lifting of the ban has solved all of the difficulties in entering it. We need to study it more".
It wouldn't be the first time Nintendo has tried to launch hardware in the country though -- in 2003, it released the iQue Player, an all-in-one device based on the N64, with games sold digitally at licensed kiosks in an effort to combat China's vast black market in electronic goods. The iQue may prove a decent blueprint for the new plans: repackaging older hardware at a lower price to better penetrate foreign markets.
Whatever form the new consoles take, they're still at least a year away from release. Speaking with Japan's Kyodo newswire, Iwata said: "I believe we will be able to make some announcement about our approach to the emerging markets for video games by the end of 2015, including when [and] in which countries we will launch what kind of products at which price point."
Iwata also emphasised: "It will be different platforms from the existing machines like Nintendo 3DS and Wii U. So, I cannot discuss the launch timing and prices today, but I am not expecting it to be as so late as fivr years from today and the price should be not as high as that for the existing Nintendo hardware. As for the software, we should take advantage of the existing software assets."
That last point sticks true to Nintendo's IP-first tradition. The companies games and machines go hand-in-hand, and the popularity of Mario, Zelda, Pokémon, et al, are key to turning around its financial misfortunes, no matter the country it's selling them in.
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So we had all these articles about them planning to do a console for devoloping countries in 2014 but we have nothing heard ever since. So putting 1+1 together could this NX simple be a console for countries like china? While they continiue to support the wiiu until the next main console comes out?
Or is the next main console focused on 1st and 2nd world countries alltogether?
