Nintendo Still Has an Edge

Nintendo is the biggest winner of the current console generation, with its Wii home console managing to consistently beat the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 when it comes to sales, despite having less storage space and a less powerful graphics engine, thanks to the impressive and forward looking motion tracking controllers it has created.

But now the Japanese manufacturer and videogame publisher is set to announce that its profit will decline year over year and more and more voices are saying that Nintendo is no longer the leader when it comes to creating surprising new experiences that can easily be picked up on by any player.

As part of an investor briefing, Satoru Iwata, who is the president of Nintendo, said that “I cannot understand at all why some people come to think that Nintendo has lost its edge as soon as they hear such news that other companies are newly applying for motion sensing technology. If fun and interesting software to take advantage of the technology could be created that easily, a number of other titles which are more fun than Wii Sports must have been already launched for Wii. Why in real life are not so many?”

Both Sony and Microsoft are gearing up to release motion controllers in 2010, with Project Natal and the motion tracking wand coming in spring and fall, respectively. But Nintendo is saying that the huge install base of the Wii is not threatened at all.

When it comes to the DS, Iwata believes the threat from the iPhone and other smartphones is minimal even if Apple has recently said that its device is better at mobile gaming than both the DS and the PlayStation Portable from Sony. He insists that Nintendo’s target is gamers in general not only those who have the money to pay for an iPhone call plan.