Iwata & Reggie Talk About Nintendo’s Online Capabilities

Many people, myself included, believe that Nintendo’s weak spot over recent years has been their online functionalities for Wii and DS. Though it is great to have the Virtual Console and some online games like Mario Kart, Nintendo’s online efforts are definitely a step back compared to the Playstation Network and Xbox Live.

Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata and NOA chief exec Reggie Fils-Aime seem to agree to, here’s what they have to say on the matter.

“We look at what we do well. We look at what we don’t do so well. The things we don’t do so well we commit ourselves to fixing and making improvements. I would put our digital business in that second category. We are looking hard at our digital business and saying, ‘You know what? We can do better.’ And we will do better. It will not look like what our competitors are doing. But we will have more content, have it be more easily discoverable. We will make it engaging and a much bigger piece of our overall business.” -Reggie Fils-Aime

Head inside for Iwata’s comments.

“Of course, I have heard commentary that people feel that Nintendo’s online functionality is behind the others or is lacking in some ways. And I can say that we are not currently satisfied with the online efforts that we have made so far, and we are working at ways to improve those. On the other hand, I do not think that online functionality is something that we should be devoting resources to for every single product. Instead, I think that Nintendo’s ability to create an offline experience that feels incredibly unique and compelling is a particular strength that we have.

Going forward, what we will continue to do is to evaluate the individual products and experience that we’re creating on a product-by-product basis, and make a decision as to whether or not it’s more important to devote resources to making that offline experience more fun and compelling for products where that is going to be the most important element of the game play; and then for products where it is going to be more important, to add online functionality and make that online functionality robust and compelling. We will continue to focus our efforts there when it’s appropriate, but it’s going to be a product-by-product decision.” – Satoru Iwata

Thanks Kotaku & NCL