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While Reggie Fils-Aime may have moved on from Nintendo into semi-retirement, the beloved former exec still has a lot of insight to offer those interested in the details of Nintendo’s operations. In a recent interview with Game Daily, Reggie gave some perspective on the state of the industry around the time he was starting with Nintendo.
“It’s tough for people to remember, but back in the early 2000s, only about one out of every three people played video games. Also back then, the industry was stagnant and in key markets like Europe and Japan, software sales were actually in decline,” Reggie said.” The company saw the stagnation of the industry as a result of too much complexity, too many sequels. [They saw] the same general game, but now it’s version five or six.”
As for how Nintendo addressed this issue, “You can clearly see the divergence in the Nintendo DS, for example, versus the PlayStation Portable. You can see divergence and strategy in the Wii, versus what Sony and Microsoft executed in their machines.”
While the lifetime sales figures of Wii and DS have definitely proven Nintendo made some smart choices, it’s interesting to see the business perspective from the people near the top. These revolutionary systems were no accident; Nintendo saw a problem and then tried to address it. The company would of course stumble with Wii U and 3DS did well despite not living up to the DS’ exceptional sales, but the Switch’s ongoing success has once again showed Nintendo’s ability to defy standard expectations and succeed with revolutionary ideas.
Source: Nintendo Life
