It was revealed today that Satoru Iwata, President and CEO of Nintendo, is replacing Tatsumi Kimishima, who will now be the general manager of Nintendo. Don’t worry, our buddy Reggie Fils-Aime will be remaining in his current position.
The reason for the move is for “organisational agility” within the entire company and pick up slacking foreign sales for the company.
Nintendo head-honcho (President and CEO), Satoru Iwata, recently reminded us of the upcoming April update for the Wii U which will shorten loading times on the system. He wrote the following on MiiVerse, just as a reconfirmation:
Hello, this is Satoru Iwata of Nintendo.
As we announced in the January Nintendo Direct, we plan to release two Wii U system updates. One in spring, and one in the summer.
Today, I would like to let you know the status of these two updates.
We are planning to release the spring system update in April, which will improve the time it takes to launch software, and the time it takes to return to the Wii U Menu.
We still have tests remaining, and it will take a little more time until we can release the update. But today, we have prepared a video so you can see how the loading time will change when returning to the Wii U Menu with the system update, so please take a look if you are interested.
In the future, we would like to share announcements about Nintendo Direct events here, so we appreciate your continued attention.
And lastly, like in other Announcement Communities, please understand that while we read every comment, we are not able to reply. Thank you.
What does seeing Iwata reconfirm the update mean to you?
Satoru Iwata detailed the account system within the Wii U at the recent Nintendo Direct broadcast, and you can watch the complete summary in the video after the break.
During the recent Nintendo Direct broadcast, Satoru Iwata provided a walkthrough of the Wii U’s video chat feature in tandem with Reggie Fils-Aime. You can check it out after the break.
Satoru Iwata has told Kotaku that Nintendo feels the need to create “a gaming platform as the place to create that ‘social graph’ for folks who are in gaming circles”. This is in response to platforms such as Facebook, as:
Facebook is something that connects you socially with a lot of different folks, but that doesn’t guarantee that the people you are going to have interactions with via Facebook are interested in games.
This is where Miiverse will possibly fill the void, becoming the “social graph” for Nintendo platforms. Whether or not it will become “the Facebook of gaming” or anything like that feels somewhat premature — and if we’re being honest, a little bit ridiculous — but it’s an interesting ambition. I hope Nintendo has the social features prepared for their media briefing on September 13th though. That will be the time to make their case.
Nintendo of America is set to host a media briefing in New York City on the 13th of September. This is where we expect to hear the release date and price for the console. Satoru Iwata, however, has said in a tweet, that there will be another media briefing in Japan before the 13th that focuses on the Wii U in Japan. When details arrive, I’ll post them here.
This is such a perfect quote from Iwata that I don’t want to ruin it with additional thoughts.
Even when we were going to launch the Wii system, there were a lot of voice saying ‘Nintendo should stop making hardware’. The reasoning behind that was Nintendo would not have any chance against Microsoft and Sony. The fact of the matter was: I did not think Nintendo should compete against these companies with the same message and same entertainment options for people. We have not changed our strategy. In other words, we just do not care what kind of ‘more beef’ console Microsoft and Sony might produce in 2013. Our focus is on how we can make our new console different than [others].
Boom.
(via gamasutra.com)