Iwata: Nintendo must look westwards

It’s one of the most prevalent trends of the current generation, and speaking to investors even the president of the world’s most powerful gaming firm has admitted that Nintendo must increasingly look towards the West if it wants to succeed in the modern games market.

"There was an era in the past, which was until the time of PlayStation 2, when games made in Japan sold well all over the world," Saturo told investors. "However, I think that, over the past three or four years, the presence of Japanese software developers has become relatively small.

"Nintendo is doing what overseas software developers do not do, so Nintendo’s software is selling relatively well also in foreign countries, but for the software oriented to enthusiastic game players, such as Call of Duty, the ones created by overseas developers are more mainstream in the overseas markets."

Though Nintendo’s strength remains its different approach to development, Iwata argues, he also says that proof of its new development ideologies will be displayed at E3.

"Of course, Nintendo will continue to run a business by creating Nintendo-like games, but we will not be able to meet the various tastes of consumers by only doing this, so I feel that it will become necessary to reinforce the development resources in the foreign countries. Therefore, I hope we will be able to show you something like that at E3."