Image courtesy of Venture Beat
It’s no secret that 2010 hasn’t been the best year for game sales– the PR spin at E3 alone focused mainly on who, in a sea of failures, had basically failed the least (as far as sales are concerned). What has been to blame? The recession? Crappy games? Nintendo president Satoru Iwata took the time in a recent E3 interview with Venture Beat to discuss the future of game sales in light of the poor year thus far. When asked about his level of concern regarding 2010, he replied:
I cannot say that the recession has no effect on the sales of video games. My belief is we should not blame the bad economy for the cause of slow sales of video games. The slow sales must be due to the lack of great software that everyone wants to buy.
He continues:
We have not shown off the great attractions of whatever we are selling. This is not the problem of Nintendo alone, but the entire video game industry. After all, something that is really fresh can make our industry grow. The important thing we have to tackle is making attractive games and marketing them well toward the end of this year. I think the whole industry should be more cautious about how we act and how the general public perceives us. In the past, the formula was to make the computer graphics more gorgeous. It used to fit the taste of the majority of the gaming audience, but it doesn’t work so well in this day and age. It’s more difficult for us to come up with something new and different and show people how different we are. The whole industry has to recognize that. Looking at the product line-ups this year, these titles might have been big hits three years ago. But now this year, they are not selling that much. In other words, people get tired of games more quickly than they did before. When you look at our 3D games concept, we recognize it will not be eternally appealing. However, it’s not a shallow concept that can be forgotten as a momentary fad.
In other words, Iwata iterates what has been said many times over the years by Nintendo, that innovation and cutting edge technology will be the only means of driving video game sales forward, a sentiment they’ve more than backed up with their business practices in the past. With the showing they put up at E3 2010 and the strong 3rd party support for the newly unveiled Nintendo 3DS (certainly the most cutting edge piece of technology to debut at E3 amidst a sea of motion control devices) t looks like 2011 will leave 2010 in the dust!
