NG: There's the ongoing debate where people, including competitors, say that the Wii has no legs or longevity. At the Nintendo press conference, Reggie said he'd be making the same argument if he were in competitors' shoes and that implies that critics are saying that because they're basically scared or surprised of Nintendo's success. But do you think that argument has absolutely no merit whatsoever?
GH: Well I think it's still hard for many people to sort of change the way they judge our industry. Our industry has been judged for more than a decade based on who had the fastest processor and the prettiest graphics. The same thinking went into the new launch of the PSP. "Oh, it's going to kill you, it's going to put GameBoy out of business, it's going to kill the Nintendo DS," and exactly the opposite has happened. PSP sales this year are down versus last year and [Sony's] whole premise was incredible graphics and a console game in your hand and it turned out to be that wasn't exactly what people wanted. And so we're trying to sort of follow our instinct and develop for the consumers and not just get trapped in the industry thing, which is [the belief that] you have to have the faster processor and prettier graphics, and you have to be a multifunctional machine that plays movies and other kinds of things.
NG: So basically that argument in your opinion is unfounded in regards to the Wii?
GH: Well not unfounded, but it starts with a premise based on one particular audience and that may be the European audience. But fans of gaming and existing gamers really like certain types of things. If you're playing a Madden Football game, you want pretty graphics, which we certainly can do on the Wii, but there's a whole bunch of other people out there who don't play videogames. They're just as viable a market, and that's where we decided to try and grow our business rather than go head-to-head with Microsoft and Sony in terms of who has the prettiest graphics and the most pixels, and things like that.
NG: At the Nintendo conference, Mr. Fils-Aime called the DS a "beacon of light" for the entire games industry. That's a big statement. Can you expand on what Nintendo means by that?
GH: Yes, it could be a beacon of light. The progress that we've made with the DS really shows what the potential is for Wii. Now is it easy to get a 45 or 50-year-old DS owner to go play a Wii console? Well it's not easy, but with things like Wii Sports -and we're hoping with Wii Fit and things of that nature - that we can do that. So the fact that we're getting people engaged in some form of interactive entertainment with the DS makes us optimistic for the Wii itself. We can get many more people in the household engaged.
Source:Next Generation
