"If Wii doesn't outsell Gamecube, we've failed".
In a Corporate Management Briefing, when asked about how many Wii Nintendo expected to have sold in three yeras, Satoru Iwata said, "I do not intend to declare how many Wii we will be selling today, but Wii will be a failure if it cannot sell far more than GameCube did. In fact, we shouldn't continue this business if our only target is to outsell GameCube. Naturally, we are making efforts so that Wii will show a far greater result than GameCube."
When questions of the Wii's power and lack of HD functionality came up at the briefing, Shigeru Miyamoto indicated that in his GameCube development he hadn't used the system's hardware to its full potential: "What we are trying to do is to create brand new freestyle entertainment that can be enjoyed by all the family members as well as by a single player. In making such entertainment, I have never felt stress about the power of Wii. Honestly, I have not been able to use 100% of GameCube's power yet, so I am very happy with Wii's far superior functionality."
Iwata weighs in on the same system power issue and admits that the lure of a more powerful console and a higher resolution were great: "I am still a developer at heart, so allow me to add my comment. I think it is just a matter of the balance. As I said earlier, the notion to be able to make more beautiful graphics is tempting. High-resolution sounds tempting too. I myself can tell the resulted difference in these areas even if many others can't, and I don't say I don't like technologies. I am one of the engineers so I am excited with new functionality. However, if I only listen to the voices of my engineer spirit, the resulted machine will be bigger in size, will take a longer time to start playing after turning on the switch and must be pretty difficult to employ such unique functions as WiiConnect24."
A more powerful system would create longer loading times and interfere with WiiConnect24? How so? Is there more to WiiConnect24 than meets the eye? Probably, but we probably won't hear anything more about it until the official price and date announcement coming in September. |
Posted by Ed on June 21.
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