14 DAY TRIAL // While its competitors, Microsoft and Sony, are trying to invest more seriously into smartphones, with the Windows Phone 7 operating system and the rumored PlayStation Phone, Nintendo has once again emphasized its devotion to dedicated handheld consoles, like the upcoming 3DS.
Nintendo is currently dominating the handheld gaming market, thanks to the multiple iterations of the Nintendo DS, but Apple, with its iPhone/iPod Touch device, is becoming a serious threat for the Japanese company.
Now, as Microsoft is launching the Windows Phone 7 operating system, with a heavy emphasis on interconnectivity with the Xbox Live service on the Xbox 360, and while Sony's PlayStation Phone prototype was leaked last week, Nintendo has once again talked about the possibility of making its own smartphone.
Speaking with Forbes, Nintendo of America boss Reggie Fils-Aime revealed that the company is adding more and more features to the DS, and will launch a lot of new things with the upcoming Nintendo 3DS, but a smartphone isn't planned.
“Certainly we are adding more and more elements to fill out the experience and take away more and more time from competing devices,” Fils-Aime said. “But our handhelds will always lead with games.”
The American executive actually started mocking smartphone manufacturers as they can't or won't invest in 3D like Nintendo is doing with the 3DS.
“3DS content will be dramatically unique to our platform, because I don’t think a smartphone manufacturer will invest to put a 3-D parallax screen in their device and not have the content to bring it to life.”
Finishing up, Fils-Aime talked about Apple, which according to previous statements, is a bigger threat to Nintendo than Microsoft, and revealed that his company will always have the upper hand thanks to its first-party content.
“What I have on Apple is content, because it’s our content,” he said. “That will give Nintendo a long-term competitive advantage.”
Is Nintendo right about staying as far away as possible from the smartphone market or should the Japanese company start stealing some moves from the likes of Apple, Sony or Microsoft?