The interview reveals information on the future of Wii including peripherals, the Wii Motion Plus, and some future titles in the Wii line.
In a recent interview, Nintendo President and CEO Satoru Iwata shared a variety of views on how his company would keep moving forward.
To begin with, he revealed that Wii Music actually marks the end of a series of titles originally envisioned by Designer Shigeru Miyamoto. When proposing the system concept to the company, Miyamoto had several game concepts in mind. However, games like Wii Sports and Wii Fit are now on the market with Wii Music soon to join them. At this point, Iwata shares, Nintendo's star designer is "saying that he needs to think up more ideas."
In addition, Iwata claims that the Motion Plus and Wii Speak accessories mark the end of their peripheral ideas for Wii. Iwata was sure to clarify that it is possible new peripherals will see release as they envision new possibilities, but that they " don't have any plans to release a whole lot more [add-ons]."
On the topic of Motion Plus, Iwata answered questions about its necessity in upcoming games. According to Iwata, "there will be games that will be enhanced by the Wii Motion Plus as well as games that can only be played with it." With this in mind, Nintendo intends to "make it very affordable" because "the cost of making the Wii Motion Plus is not that much."
In the vein of add-ons to the Wii system, Iwata was questioned on the possibility of Nintendo moving into the video download market, a market now being pursued by both Sony and Microsoft. Iwata expressed that they would only pursue the market if they "can do something different that plays up [their] strengths -- and broadens what a videogame constitutes."
When the DS first started reaching the mainstream crowd, Iwata stated his intention for players to eventually move from games like Brain Age to more traditional titles like New Super Mario Brothers. Iwata stated in the interview that 35% of people who purchased Brain Age as their first title went on to purchase more DS games within 90 days. Of that 35%, 10% of those people went on to purchase eleven titles or more.
Continuing with the DS, Iwata mentioned that the DS is becoming a more suitable platform for things that mobile phones would normally do because of the unified nature of the platform. As such Nintendo has considered moving forward with more applications that encourage people to carry their DS around with them on a daily basis.
Iwata ended the interview stating that Nintendo is indeed currently working on successors to the Wii and DS. However, he pointed out that Nintendo has always started work on successors to hardware upon release of the current system.
