14 DAY TRIAL // Laurent Fischer, one of the most important people at Nintendo Europe, has issued an apology regarding some remarks he made last week regarding people that demanded more storage space for their Nintendo Wii gaming consoles.
He now says that "I have huge respect for those who, like me, share a common passion for Nintendo and want to make it clear that I would never use and I didn't use this terminology in such a context or way to cause offense." Nintendo is also saying that it respects its customers immensely because they are the main cause behind the huge success of Nintendo and its products.
As he was quizzed about more storage space for the Wii, including about rumors speculating that a new hard drive model of the console might be unveiled soon, Fischer lashed out by saying that only "geeks and otaku" needed a hard drive and that the Wii was positioning itself as a console for the entire family and for casual gamers.
Gamers were pretty quick to protest, taking the remark as a sign that Nintendo was not respecting the more hardcore gamers. God of War creator David Jaffe also pitched in his with his opinion that the company should not target one category of gamers in favor of the others.
The remarks from Laurent Fischer have come at a time when there's more and more speculation regarding the fact that the Wii needs more storage space, especially as the Wiiware service, featuring downloadable content, is launched for the console. A recent announcement for a job opening at Nintendo raises the possibility that USB devices might be used to extend the storage capacity of the console. Such a move would fit the innovation image that Nintendo is pushing and would allow users to customize their consoles.
E3 is just around the corner and big videogame companies have a tendency to show off their latest and greatest at the expo, so Nintendo might just surprise everyone and give "geeks and otaku" their storage space.