That means the main selling points for the company's upcoming GameCube console won't be cutting-edge graphics and Internet connectivity, but price, family-friendly software, and the return of beloved Nintendo characters such as Mario and Pokemon.
Nintendo is counting on those factors--along with the upcoming Game Boy Advance, the next generation of the handheld gaming phenomenon--to keep pace in the increasingly competitive game hardware business.
Main spoke about the new challenges of the game business and Nintendo's competitive position during an interview with CNET News.com.
It seems like Nintendo is being cast as the underdog in this round of the console wars. Does that feel odd, considering that Nintendo helped create this business?
I think we've suffered in profile the last couple of months by virtue of our decision not to say anything about what GameCube was. That led a lot of people to deduce we were not going to be players this round. And when we showed up (at E3) and unveiled not only a real product but some compelling, unique software, gamers of every interest were coming to the floor and saying, "Thank goodness."
Why the closed lips for so long?
We believe that gaming, not being one of life's necessities, tends to be an impulse purchase. You develop an interest in gaming and then decide you do want to spend the few hundred dollars for a console. We believe that decision is made in 60 to 90 days of making the purchase.
In the interim--while Microsoft had nothing else to do and Sony had the PS2 to push--we had a lot of N64 (consoles) to sell and Game Boy Color to sell. For that reason, we strongly urged our retailers to not even start talking about Game Boy Advance until the week after Easter... in preparation for a launch in mid-June. Likewise, we decided we were going to stay under the radar of the gaming public on Nintendo GameCube to continue interest in the existing product.
Any time you put a bona fide reason for delaying the purchase of one of these systems in front of the consumer, it hurts the market. I think coming out of this show, the noise about GameCube and Xbox is going to hurt PlayStation 2 sales for a while. I think an inordinate number of people will decide to wait and see what this is all about. That's not so good for the industry--but I can't say I'm feeling so bad for Sony being slowed down a little bit.
Any regrets about coming out on the market now instead of a year ago, when Dolphin (the original name for GameCube) was originally scheduled?
"You've got to get it right, and you've got to get the software right. Our announcements (of the on-sale dates) were not driven by questions about whether our hardware would or wouldn't be finished, but by (Chief Game Designer Shigeru) Miyamoto saying he was at an adequate point without software, both internally and second party, to go to market.
Now we're ready to go to battle. We'll be ahead of Microsoft in the Japanese market... and we'll be here duking it out with them in the US from day one.
