Iwata: 'we Don't Care About Sony'

[wraggster]

It's been an epic struggle for the hearts and minds of gamers at this year's GDC show, with both Nintendo and Sony fighting for the next-gen spotlight. Sony managed to grab the attention of show-goers with a plethora of demos and game announcements, but Nintendo president Satoru Iwata is unsurprisingly placing his bets with Revolution.
Speaking to the Seattle Times, the Nintendo president said that the Revolution was unaffected by Sony's recent PlayStation 3 delay. "Because what we are aiming at with the Revolution is much different from what Sony's aiming at with the PlayStation 3, I really don't think any changes in their schedule will affect Nintendo greatly," he said.

He continued: "we have never thought in terms of when they will make the PlayStation 3 available, but rather our hope is launching Revolution in 2006. In that sense, we really don't care what Sony is talking about with a launch delay."
Iwata also cast a retrospective look on the performance of the GameCube, which sold even lower than Nintendo's previous console the N64. Iwata said that he thought that the GameCube was not differentiated enough from the Playstation 2, but notes that company are working to correct the error in the next wave of consoles. "Because [the PS3 and Revolution] are going to be so different, I don't think consumers will wonder which one they should choose," he said.

In another interview this weekend conducted with the Taipei Times, Iwata made some interesting comments on Nintendo's intentions - or lack thereof - to follow Microsoft and Sony's lead in conducting a simultaneous worldwide launch for their console. "We don't think it's necessary to do the simultaneous worldwide launch simply because others are doing this," he said.

The Nintendo president has previously said that he hopes to bring the Revolution to "as many countries as possible at the same time," but the company has thus far been hesitant to commit to any kind of simultaneous launch in Europe. We can only hope that Nintendo doesn't follow previous console trends - such as the Nintendo DS - and condemn Europe to a 2007 release for the Revolution.

As usual, we'll have our fingers crossed until May's E3 show, where more Revolution launch details will no-doubt be divulged.

[fackue]

Now that SEGA's out of sight, I think Nintendo will see a boost in sales compared to their GameCube. I believe I heard SEGA did extremely well with the Dreamcast. I think most SEGA fans will move onto Nintendo, or will just get out of the home gaming community.

[b8a]

That's an interesting opinion... I know that in Japan back in 2000, a lot of the Sega fans were placing their bets on the XBox, and I guess I've been assuming that that's were the majority of the Sega dollars went after they dropped out of the console market. It just made sense to me, because Sega (in it's post Megadrive years) was after the same market as Microsoft eventually appealed to: the non-casual, harder-core, borderline PC gamers that Nintendo and Sony have largely ignored in their pursuit of a larger majority of the general public.

[GaMeR_2000]

I hope Nintendo learns from the gamecube and the revolution will hopefully be at least 20 times better. (Note I didnt say "more powerful")