Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has responded to the Wii U’s struggling efforts and lack of third-party software. In a recent interview with IGN, he acknowledged that the Wii U needs third party support because Nintendo can’t do everything on its own.
“The fact of the matter is that there are some areas of game creation that Nintendo is very good at, but there are other things that Nintendo is not very good at. There are huge numbers of fans of Nintendo software, but at the same time, those types of players still sometimes want to play something else on our platform. Because of that, we always need third parties to support us, in order to make our platform complete.”
Like the Wii U, the 3DS also suffered a lacklustre launch, but sales were subsequently revived thanks to a number of first party titles. Now there is strong third-party support for the platform as well. Iwata and team are approaching the situation with the Wii U in a similar light.
“What we need to do is regain the momentum of the Wii U in the marketplace and establish successful examples of third-party Wii U software. Our focus is, first of all, to regain the momentum of the Wii U towards the end of this year, and then we’ll try to establish successful third-party Wii U software titles. I believe in the importance of third-party support for Nintendo platforms. I’m very willing to change the current situation.”
While Nintendo vowed not to make the same mistakes they made with launching Wii U as they did with launching the 3DS, it’s important to note that a handheld gaming platform and a home console are two different beasts entirely. For one, the Wii U marks Nintendo’s first experience developing games for an HD system. Fortunately, Iwata is hard at work addressing the situation. From here, things can only improve.
