Reggie: Time Spent on Rival Devices is a Missed Opportunity For Nintendo

Really not much new or surprising there. But it is interesting how they are finally embracing this "all in one" philosophy that's taken years and nearly 2 full generations of consoles to figure out.

So Nintendo thinks of itself as an "entertainment" company because it uses Mario and Zelda and has some casual game franchise for the grandparents to play along with. Good to know he can interchange "gaming" with "entertainment" when it suits his marketing message.

Reggie's fooling himself if he actually thinks that Nintendo has any potential play outside of interactive software. It's like, last, in a long, long stream of competition.

Miiverse should also help as a middleground, if it turns out to be what it's looking like.

I'm still disappointed in the lack of DVD/Blu-ray playback on the consoles. I understand Big N doesn't want to pay consortium royalties, thereby keeping costs down, but I would have to think the sheer number of people buying the system because of disc playback would be full of profit.

Is it just me or is his wrist censored? Anyway blame the parents.

@Damo
Does Nintendo really have the casual sector "in its hands"and MS doesn't? Maybe if it were still 2008 that would be right, but now I'm not quite so sure about that (surely if anyone has the casual sector in its hands right now it's Apple and Google/Android).

That child isn't playing a game. He is clearly trying to call his mummy to let her know that the parking inspector is starting to write up a ticket... Hurry back mother

@Damo
Yeah, but I think the point that Microsoft doesn't have the casual sector is no longer true. I think the days of the Xbox brand being seen as just for Gears/Halo hardcore shooters, etc. is long gone. The sort of things that were discussed in this interview for example are things that I would say casual gamers would associate with Xbox more than Nintendo.

The only way I'd connect the WiiU to a TV is if I can connect it via my television aerial ala PlayTV on the PS3.

I only get to download 8gig a month, so any streaming services are lost on me.

Damo - how many content companies does Nintendo own? What resources does it have to scope out major partnerships?

This isn't a matter of just sticking a TV card into the console. If Nintendo wants to compete with Apple, Sony, Microsoft, the telecommunications companies themselves and a HOST of smaller niche players, then Nintendo is going to need to make massive investments.

That is precisely what Sony did - invest in being a content rather than device supplier, as content is the cruicial product in entertainment services. It has put the company in a dire financial situation.

At best Nintendo's non-gaming entertainment offerings is going to amount to a tenth-rung, substandard service. The only people that will ever bother with it are the people that don't use Apple, Google, Microsoft and other products. Ever.

That's almost no one, and certainly not enough to support any real push by Nintendo.

@ChunkyDroidster Sounds like you need the Telstra Home Ultimate bundle mate $130 a month gives you unlimited local/overseas calls, 200gig bigpond download, T-box with access to any TV/movie on demand whenever you like. make the switch today and you can thank me later

@MadAussieBloke I can only afford 60 a month and I have no phone line, so mobile broadband is my only option. And where I live, Virgin, Optus and Vodafone only work properly at certain times of the day, it's truly frustrating!

At least the 8 gigs I get only slows down once I hit the limit.

Trust me, in 2 years when I get a teaching job, the first thing I'll be getting is that T-Box

Baby steps. The Gamepad is their in. If the WiiU sells well then 5 years from now with the WiiXYZ they can offer a Gamepad that ISN'T connected to the WiiXYZ so people can take it with them and play casual games all day long. They just have to get their before Sony does it with the PS4 controller which will look suspiciously like the Vita, which Sony will claim Nintendo ripped off from them. .
On the handheld front, people complain you can't play games without buttons, but I claim I can't browse the web or read email well on the 3DS, so the tablet wins. Can somebody please buy Reggie a Samsung Galaxy Player 4.2 for $179 so he can see how well these things can be done on a system the same size and price. A 3DS XL for $199 should smoke a $159 Kindle Fire.

I have painful troubles surfing the web on both the 3DS and tablets, seriously, filling out forms on a touch screen is awful.

I have a notebook, and a 3DS, I don't need a tablet (despite that Waltz might have seen me using one at the Expo if he saw me in the media room, lol)

I absolutely agree that Nintendo could consider themselves an entertainment company - heck the Famicom was marketed as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) when released worldwide! How many people could honestly say they are not entertained by a Wii or a 3DS??

I would also strongly agree that Nintendo still has the majority of casual gamer's, especially in the UK. I see very little argument that MS has the majority, despite their efforts with Kinect.

"AN Nintendo logo"

The fact that Nintendo TVii is based on a pre-existing app, iTV, that works on other devices is somewhat worrying. I'm happy that it hasn't taken up resources from EAD or anything like that, so that's good.... although the magic of Nintendo software is its unique flavor, the charm that stems from their particular viewpoint (something like Swapnote, though flawed, is a good example). If a major facet of WiiU (at least in the West) is this TVii offering, that's not even a true Nintendo product, I worry it'll feel generic or tacked on or, worst of all, uninteresting. Hope I'm proven wrong.

You know, Nintendo lost money last year, and we still don't know the full details, they might have actually made a huge investment on something big WiiU relate we don't know about, we just assume it was the 3DS not selling when it could have been something else, I mean if they arnt actually selling the "Big product" that's incorporated with the WiiU of course they'll lose money, as for the 3DS price cut, it could just so happen Nintendo wanted to cut the price so the wouldn't lose more money so they acted on it

@1 actually the GCN played DVDs
And the GBA could play music

Why can't the world just let Nintendo be Nintendo? You can feel the investor and media pressure in many statements Nintendo leaders make these days that they should be something more than the wonderful game and console maker they are. Times have changed I guess. I just hope nintendo's changing with it sees no compromise of the charm and quality I have always had as a consumer of theirs.

Sorry for using my TV, computer, iPad, PSP or doing real life activities for entertainment, Reggie .

Sent from my 3DS to not make Nintendo lose anything.

Well, it's interesting that he's saying this. To survive as a hardware company, Nintendo may very well need to become a big competitor in the wider entertainment landscape. As for blu-ray — and I love blu-rays-- those are for people who are serious enough about movies and TV to buy dedicated players. It was a boon for PS3, but now people are streaming or buying cheap dedicated players. It's a good time for Nintendo to get into this and the handheld screen linked to "everything" is a VERY good start. Our family actually has a Tivo, Netflix, and subscribes to Amazon Prime, so Nintendo TVii is a surprisingly attractive proposition for us. It's good Nintendo sees the potential there. If handled in the right way, Nintendo TVii could be the killer app for many casuals visiting friends houses.

Also, his examples of expanding past traditional games are valid. I think people forget how Brain Age was to DS what Tetris was to Game Boy. Wii Fit is the only other product for the Wii that got a huge audience excited in the way that Wii Sports did. These are games without the traditional core rewards played in a different way. Nintendo has tasted the broader market and has shown itself capable of tapping into mass market desires.

Nintendo TVii is just US though, right? Then, the Americas?

It's not like the US covers a big part of the Americas.

I can't wait to see Nintendo translate everything about the TVii to every single language spoken in the Americas just to add at the bottom of the page "Only availabe for the US/Canada".

Nintendo should make pokemon 3d it would be a big hit

not pokedex 3d for free

Nintendo needs to be careful..here in California a lot of parents have set up mobile phones for their kids--most of them iPhones. My niece has stopped playing with her DS and my friend's daughter has also given up her Wii and DS.

Nintendo has a lot going for it in the console space. The handheld part is being threatened through many of our iphones because the same demographic, at least mostly, has been targeted and locked into other systems.

Being a specialized "fun" gaming company is their future, and somewhere they know it. They just realise they need to be a part of your living room experience to maintain that quality name. In the end, the gamer that likes the extra's is far better off than the potential consumer that might like games. And this is probably the best position nintendo could find themselves in.

Eh, I have mixed feelings on whether Nintendo can become a place for general entertainment just because the competition are literally these super giant monsters like Microsoft, Apple, and Google. I am on a computer that is running Windows 7. Maybe they can do it but it's an uphill battle and they have started pretty late in the game. They might want to just make the effort and try to market themselves as a mainly gamer console that is still accessible to everybody.

I hate the trend of absolute convergence in modern technology/society. I like using my gaming device to play games, my music device to listen to music, and my cell phone to forget to stay in communication with friends and family. Somehow I feel like being able to do all of those things on a single device cheapens any one of the given experiences. Or it just makes me lazy. It's too easy to just download crap (music, applications, games, whatever) and forget about it immediately without feeling like there's any big loss. I guess it's hard to explain why I'm so opposed to facebook phones (I mean, uh... "smart" phones), but at least where games are concerned, I like the way Nintendo thinks. Every time I buy a game for one of my Nintendo systems it becomes something to be treasured, not to be forgotten as soon as the next iteration is released or as soon as I find some other thing to purchase to replace it.

@TruenoGT

I think Nintendo are not trying to do what Sony or Apple or anything like that! With the Wii they tried to make a system with news channels and the like and an intuitive user interface like the Wii Remote to try and get the whole family using the system, not just kids! With TVWii they look like they are trying the same thing. Even the design of the Gamepad is trying to be a device that may be used by even grandma's to broaden use of the system. I thin k it's a Trojan horse type strategy!

I honestly think Nintendo do these things to get more people playing games while MS in particular are making their Xbox to be a device that bring them in money from things other than gaming!

I hear ya @kurtasbestos. I think anyone who understands the enthusiast mindset would understand. Theres something about the "ritual" involved with say, dimming the lights popping some popcorn and plopping in front of the tv for a movie thats lost with just pulling one up on a tablet. having everything downloaded just makes you care less about it.

For many games there comes a point of "why play the first game when number 2 is better?" that Just rarely happens with Nintendo games. Most games in a series are different enough to make them worth going back to.