Nintendo president Satoru Iwata realizes that Nintendo fans are disappointed. In a recent interview with SpiegelOnline, Iwata was nothing short of humble when discussing Nintendo’s failure to capture the hardcore gamer at E3 this year. When prompted to respond to the sentiment of disappointment from gamers, Iwata explained that the reason Nintendo was not able to cater to the hardcore crowd was because of release schedules.
We wanted to show what we are this year and [in] early 2009 on the market. We have [never neglected] hardcore gamers, and there are still teams in such games. It just takes longer [to develop] these games; they finish in two to three years. We could not bring any [hardcore games] in the beginning of 2009, so we couldn’t show any at E3.
If Iwata’s previous statements about upcoming hardcore games mean anything, this implies that Mario, Zelda, or even Pikmin will appear eventually, just not before early 2009. All of this was prefaced by Iwata saying that the Wii’s success was built on the premise of lowering “the hurdle” of games to bring along a new following. Certainly, while it may be exciting to get our hands on one of those hallmark first-party Nintendo titles like Mario or Zelda, I think I’ll pass on the new standard that is WiiMusic. Hopefully Mr. Iwata doesn’t think that the majority of us would like to watch Link walk through a dungeon as we mindlessly hit “A” to simulate discovery.
