Last night, current Nintendo president, Satoru Iwata, announced many of the upcoming plans for Nintendo heading into 2014, after a less than profitable 2013. There are a lot of new focuses pushing forward, including increasing visibility and understandinf of the Wii U and its features, citing that there are too many consumers who still don’t know that its a seperate console from the Wii.
In addition, there are plans to introduce device-free health monitoring systems for the Wii U, increased support for the Virtual Console, and the release of big name games Smash Bros and Mario Kart 8 to hopefully boost sales of both the Wii U and 3DS.
Iwata also addressed some of the biggest rumors floating around about the company for some time now. Nintendo will not be developing games for other platforms any time soon, but is open to the idea of licensing properties and characters to other companies to use, a movie probably greatly considered after the success of western games like the latest Luigi’s Mansion.
Nintendo also won’t be developing smartphone games any time soon, instead rather developing apps to help connect the users’ experience to the devices themselves and increase awareness of Nintendo brands, saying that Nintendo wants the user to essentially be the device.
More news includes the fact that there will be no price drop for the Wii U any time soon and that there will be no major restructuring of the company, despite Iwata and other higher ups taking a newly cut pay for the new year. Nintendo is also looking into streaming technology and getting more out of the NFC features of the Wii U.
It sounds like Nintendo’s not quite done fighting yet, and hopefully with a little luck, they still have some worthwhile tricks up their sleeves for the finale.
