Are you people serious? What on earth do you think MS are going to do? With over twenty years of hardcore faithful gamers Nintendo did what no one else would consider, try marketing to other non gamers.
Yes MS will do it, they already tried it with movie game and lips, and they will NOT be as successful as Nintendo is either. They will merely, and be fearful of this, alienate their only audience (cores) and possibly incite a more acceptable shift to PS3 or even Wii. Acceptable because, unlike Nintendo, there is no 20 year commitment involved for them, more like 2 years considering PS2's control last gen.
2 things are intersting about this statement. 1, he believes cost cutting is related to casual games, not neccesarily when looking at the numbers involved with 1st party Wii.... games. 2, "Shake off the hardcore stigma?", that sounds like a pretty negative view of their entire market share doesn't it?, like its hindering their performance as a business.
“When we make some new announcement and if there is no positive initial reaction from the market, I try to think of it as a good sign because that can be interpreted as people reacting to something groundbreaking. ...if the employees were always minding themselves to do whatever the market is requiring at any moment, and if they were always focusing on something we can sell right now for the short term, it would be very limiting. We are trying to think outside the box.” - Satoru Iwata - This is why corporate multinationals will never truly understand, or risk doing, what Nintendo does.
