Fils-Aime: Competitors face significant strategic conundrum

Another snippet to emerge from yesterday’s BMO Capital Markets Conference comes from Nintendo America president Reggie Fils-Aime, who has claimed that rivals Microsoft and Sony now find themselves in an awkward position in the next-gen market.

CNN quotes him as saying: "The challenge that our competitors have is significant. They’ve gone down the path with very expensive machines where they lose money on the hardware on every unit they sell. They’ve gone down a path that makes it challenging for third-party developers to create content.

"So our competitors have put themselves in quite a box. How they get out of it is a challenge – creating casual content for those systems won’t work. Not only because the ease of play won’t be there but the consumer won’t be there.

"I don’t think a consumer paying $600 for a Sony system, software and accessories is the same consumer who wants to play a more casual type of product. So they have a significant strategic conundrum, and one that won’t be easy to resolve.”