Nintendo President Gets Spanked

I like Satoru Iwata. Back in the day he was an artist at Nintendo, contributing to the Zelda and Mario series. He helped create the Kirby series. This was before he became president of HAL in the 1990's, who are responsible of the Pokemon series of games. Finally, the early 2000's saw his rise to become the head of Nintendo after the dreaded Hiroshi Yamauchi left the company.

The point is, Iwata worked his way up within the company. He was literally there at Nintendo's video gaming beginning. He knows what it's like to be at the bottom. He has game design experience. He understands what a gamer wants, or we thought so.


His two biggest success was expanding the gaming market by utilizing touch and motion technologies. The industry needed that kick in the ass. My Grandmother owns both a Nintendo Wii and DS because of this. It made gaming easier and more attractive to everybody.

Today, is a different story.


The Wii has ran it's course. The hardcore community has moved on. The Nintendo 3DS sits on store shelves, with a gigantic price cut that happened less than six months after launch.

Like I said last post, I can not recall any piece of tech that has had it's price drastically cut in recent years. I'll also include their E3 2011 press conference that highlighted a piece of new gaming tech(the Wii U) that not only confused gamers and journalists but was demoed with, well, tech demo pieces instead of actual games. The successors to Iwata's greatest hits, appears to be gimmicks instead of groundbreaking new ways to game. The 3DS has the 3D and the Wii U has an extra screen, kinda like the DS for televisions.


Today, news has come down the line that Iwata has now had his pay cut in half. I don't think we have to worry. It doesn't mean he'll have to move into a dumpster anytime soon. He was making around 2 million dollars a year.

Source: Kotaku