Nintendos Reggie Fils-Aime talks iPhone
Satoru Iwata managed to say very little in his recent GDC keynote speech, but VentureBeat managed to catch up with Nintendo of Americas president Reggie Fils-Aime, who was refreshingly candid about Nintendos marketing approach in the face of the iPhone.
When asked what the popularity of the iPhones digital distribution network means to Nintendo, he bolstered the growing opinion that its this area of mobile gaming that the DSi has been made to address.
What weve embraced is the concept of digital content, Fils-Amie says. Thats a powerful concept. What they are trying to do has elements of that. We believe the content has to be innovative, high quality, distinctive versus derivative of what you might find on a plethora of other platforms. The latter is not very appealing to us.
By derivative, he seems to be talking about the free and budget range iPhone games, which he goes on to point out is not an area Nintendo wants to explore.
Asked whether Nintendo intends to cater for professional over amateur developers (many of whom, it must be said, have made the iPhone and the App Store as popular as it is, and released some valuable games), he replies:
Yes. That is what distinguishes WiiWare from what our competitors are doing. We believe this community of 18,000 developers can create much more compelling content than something home-brewed.
Essentially this could go either way for the DSis download service. Either coding for Nintendo will remain an elitist club with expensive membership fees, or the minor and occasionally substandard budget games will be filtered to keep DSiWare content under strict quality control.