Satoru Iwata on Nintendo in 2007, 2008

Feb. 5 6:58 PM by Lynxara

To round off an interviewful day, here's an excellent GameSpot talk with Nintendo President Satoru Iwata. It's not so much that the questions are good, but that Iwata is unusually frank and willing to allow insight into why Nintendo does what it does. Probably the most interesting answer of the piece is Iwata's discussion of the success of the Wii in the US, so I'll tease you with that. The entire piece is really worth reading, though.

In retrospect, the US culture of the house party played a major role in spreading the value of Wii to a bigger circle faster than we ever predicted. All of my American friends keep telling me, "Man, the Wii is the ultimate party machine!" [Laughs] But none of that was intentional on our part. All we did was ask ourselves how to pack the most smiles and surprises into the product as we developed it. Fortunately, we hit a sweet spot. As a result, interest in the Wii has spread across the US surprisingly quickly. I think that explains why the DS took off faster in Japan, but the Wii has spread faster in America.