29th May 2003, 11:44 AM
Quote:The president of Nintendo Co. Ltd, Satoru Iwata, has come out again to say that the direction of the company is not to join the other console manufacturers in making gamers pay extra for online games. Then he also went on to say that Nintendo is investing some of their $6 billion dollars on the successors to the next GameCube and Game Boy. Unfortunately he doesn’t say how much, we only know that it’s "some." Iwata made a bold statement that Nintendo’s developers are hard at work on the next-generation stars to replace Mario and Pokémon.
Yes, you heard right, it looks like Iwata may be trying to take the company into an entirely new direction. He himself has been focused on the creative side of gaming, so he could direct Nintendo in creating such titles. He seems to indicate that the current franchises may be too outdated now for most gamers, so that is why he is saying the next lineup of big-name titles are being developed to “replace” Mario and Pokémon.
In other news today, Sony has announced plans to release a system called the PSX for early next year, it will be a beefed up PS2 hardware with TV tuner, hard disk drive and DVD recorder. Go figure, I though the PSX was already released… confusing name. Sony also says that they are going to work more on their gaming division to increase profits for the entertainment company. Microsoft's Xbox chief today fires off a comment about Nintendo saying "I don't think Nintendo is here for the digital-entertainment revolution. They are a toy company."
I hope they don't phase out Mario completely and I would like to see a Pokemon RPG someday, but I'm intersted to know what new big-name games they have in the works.
Quote:"I don't think Nintendo is here for the digital-entertainment revolution"
That's because they are more interested in actually MAKING GAMES instead putting a bunch of useless features into their console. Game consoles should play games not record your favorite tv shows, store your music collection, and wash your clothes.
Quote:"They are a toy company."
Umm...No, I think they are a videogame developer.
N-Philes
Sometimes you get the scorpion.