Nintendo announced its new dedicated games platform, codenamed NX, out of the blue early last week, and did so to ensure it was known that the firm remained committed to its platform business, president Satoru Iwata has explained.
"About the reason why I announced NX ... it is true that it has no direct relationship with our alliance announcement today," Iwata explained in a now translated Japanese Q&A held on March 17. "I announced it because I wanted to convey my message that Nintendo is even more passionate about and highly motivated to continue its dedicated game system business.
"As I mentioned today, we were able to overcome the issues concerning our business expansion on smart devices and have reached a conclusion about Nintendo's approach and the utilization of smart devices so that we can encourage a great number of people to become acquainted with Nintendo IP. For these consumers, we would like to provide the more premium gameplay experiences on our dedicated game platforms so that they understand the overwhelming appeal of the detailed game worlds so much so that they become immersed in these worlds and even core game players can play to their heart's content. Nintendo will firmly continue its core business.
"The biggest reason (why I mentioned NX today) was that I wanted to eliminate such misunderstandings as we made the smart device announcement today because Nintendo is pessimistic about the future for the dedicated game system business."
Nintendo has said we'll hear more about NX in 2016.
Source: Nintendo
