Iwata Acknowledges the “Lugging Around Multiple Carts” Issue on DS

More than a year ago, famed Japanese copywriter and creator of Earthbound, Shigesato Itoi interviewed Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, covering a plethora of topics ranging from Nintendo to Iwata’s philosophy on design and a brief history of how the two men met. To date, I still think it is one of the Iwata interviews I’ve read, owing largely to his relationship with Itoi and his website, “Hobo Nikkan Itoi Shinbun.” If you’re an Iwata fan, I would highly recommend reading the piece.

Recently, Yasuhiro Nagata from “Hobo Nikkan Itoi Shinbun” conducted a special edition of the popular “Iwata Asks” series of interviews, with Iwata once again taking the spotlight and being grilled on a number of Nintendo-related matters. Here’s the portion of the interview I found most interesting:

Iwata: I’ve heard complaints—some not entirely bad, such as about having to lug around a bunch of game cartridges, for example— and noticed that, even though we have changed the nature of gaming with the Nintendo DSi, the other Nintendo DS family systems hitherto has represented the same old concept centered around plugging in a single game cartridge.

Also, sometimes when using my cell phone, I’ve thought that adapting this or that service to the DS would make it much more convenient. And, above all, I’ve thought about what should be done so the DS platform will remain vibrant years down the road.

But I wonder if perhaps Nintendo DSi solves all these problems by allowing users to tailor their own unit and walk around with their personalized Nintendo DSi systems.

I’ll admit, that is easily my biggest gripe with the DS at the moment.

Iwata goes on to state that famous Miyamoto quote that a true idea is “something which solves multiple issues at once.” Well, making it possible to load your DS games to an SD card on DSi and carry them all with you would solve the inconvenience issue and might also help offset piracy to an extent. That sounds like a true solution to me.

Question is, does Iwata think so, too?

http://www.siliconera.com/2009/04/02...s-issue-on-ds/