Iwata: Console cycle too inflexible

Speaking at a recent Nintendo Australia financial results conference, Nintendo’s president Satoru Iwata has claimed that the established ‘four-year life cycle’ for games hardware has become too inflexible an approach”,

Next-Gen

reports.

Stating that both the DS and Wii have a long way to go before Nintendo considered updating its hardware, Iwata stated: "I’m quite doubtful that such a notion of platform cycles can be applied in the future. As we continue our research and study for new hardware, when we will be able to launch a new kind of hardware will actually depend on when we can change entertainment completely, and so have a strong impact on people around the world.

Or, there will certainly be a time when we have to say that we have done everything possible with the current machine, that we can never propose anything new. Scheduling for a rather fixed launch date four years from today, regardless of future changes in the industry and the market, appears to be too inflexible an approach to us.

"Since Nintendo’s hardware engineers and software creators are always communicating closely, only when both teams agree that it is time to challenge the market with new hardware that we will launch it.

We are not suffering from the shortage of new ideas for DS. I heard that some of the attendees to our October 10 conference were expecting to hear about a new portable machine announcement, but we never had that kind of notion in the first place."