It's time (get it? TIME? Ehem...) to give this sucker the most pessimistic spin I possibly can!
Making Nintendo Account and My Nintendo work well is his number one goal with regards to the companys mobile strategy
I'm getting really sick of Nintendo and it's convoluted approach to account systems. Now we have Nintendo Network ID, Nintendo Account, My Nintendo, not to mention things like Miiverse. I do not understand the relationship between all these things, and I'm an enthusiast who posts on NeoGAF. How the hell does Nintendo expect the average consumer (or eight-year-old or soccer mom) to understand this shit? I'm sure if someone painstakingly explained to me the exact relationships between all these services and Nintendo's future plans for them, I could understand it. But that's exactly the problem: you have to actually study this shit to even understand which of Nintendo's myriad services you're even signing up for/signed up for/linked together/signed into on your console/downloaded onto your phone. Come on. How about
one damn account system, with
one name and
one login, with everything painlessly integrated together?
But Kimishima admits the company hasnt done a great job of explaining Miitomo
Maybe you can't explain Miitomo in a way that makes it sound compelling, because
it's just not that compelling? So I can see my friends' answers to some simple, clean, boring questions. Okay? We've been doing this with Facebook tagging posts for ages, not to mention college students doing an actually entertaining version of this every time they play "Never Have I Ever" or "One Time I Did in Fact." Why would I care about this?
He acknowledges the Wii Us problems, but says the company intends to keep making software for the console
More software like Mario Tennis Ultra Smash and Animal Fucking Crossing: Fucking Amiibo Festival? You can keep them. If all you're gonna do to spice up my cornflakes is piss in them, then don't even bother trying.
People arent using Amiibo the way Nintendo intended (yet)
A challenge that were facing right now is, our earliest goal for the Amiibo was to have these connected to software and have them enhance the play experience for the consumer, and for other consumers to say I see my friend using this Amiibo with that software and it looks great, and again increase that attractiveness of that combination. What were seeing instead is that the Amiibo are being picked up more as a collection item at this point, rather than, say, as an interactive item with software. And so we havent really established them as an enhancement for all of our software at this point.
"We haven't locked enough gameplay features behind our expensive plastic toys yet! That's what's wrong with them!" Fuck off.
Nintendos quality of life initiative is still underway
Mr. Iwata had, when he previously talked about the quality of life initiative, I believe he had talked about it being related to sleep and fatigue, says Kimishima. And the only information I really have now is to say that the quality of life initiative is still under development, and I have no further information to share. Its just not at the point in development where I feel I can make any announcements at this time.
"Quality of Life sounded like a good buzzword to make our shareholders less angry, but we were 5 years late to the game, everyone already owns a FitBit, no one gave a shit about our sleep monitor, and we really have no idea what we're gonna make."
And he says NX is definitely a departure from the Wii and Wii U
As far as NX goes, Ive said its different and obviously a new experience, he tells me. If you look back to the beginning of our conversation today, we talked about the transition from Wii hardware to the Wii U hardware and how difficult it is to explain to the consumer base what is different and new about the new hardware. Its difficult to convince them to switch from their current platform to the next platform.
That being said, I can assure you were not building the next version of Wii or Wii U. Its something unique and different. Its something where we have to move away from those platforms in order to make it something that will appeal to our consumer base.
This doesn't necessarily mean that the NX isn't backwards compatible. It could mean that the NX is built around a brand new gimmick (but they'll probably still incur the expense of shoehorning in backwards compatibility with obsolete Power PC architecture, because hey, who needs to keep architecture up to date and prices down?)
I dunno why this interview made me so vitriolic. Damn. I guess I just want to see
something from Nintendo. We haven't had a genuinely exciting announcement from them since... when? Before E3, certainly. Still no real info on the NX, no interesting footage of Zelda Wii U, not even a confirmation that they're gonna abandon the absolutely contemptible, disgusting, sleazy anti-consumer practice of region-locking their consoles.
