Iwata: ‘Nintendo is Not Good at Competing’, Must Offer Something Different

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has given a keynote speech at the B Dash Camp conference in which he stressed that the company must create something different to what's being offered on rival platforms as "Nintendo is not good at competing". 

The speech, translated by The Bridge, also revealed that Iwata does not fear failure. 

“When we talk about Nintendo we cannot ignore (former president) Hiroshi Yamauchi who just recently passed away. He always said that if you have failure, you don’t need to be too concerned. You always have good things and bad, and this reflects the history of Nintendo. If you do the same thing as others, it will wear you out. Nintendo is not good at competing so we always have to challenge [the status quo] by making something new, rather than competing in an existing market.”

Iwata also commented on initial fears that the Pokemon and Brain Training franchises would not perform well outside Japan; particularly in the US. 

“Will America accept cute monsters?” No, they said. Some people even recommended to make Pikachu more muscular. If we followed their advice Pokemon would never have been the success that it was. Brain Training software (Brain Age) became a hit in Japan, and I proposed that we sell it globally. And even as I said that as the president, no one listened.”

Of course, both series have been massive successes for the company with Pokemon X and Y releasing this weekend on 3DS. 

Nintendo continues to struggle selling the Wii U with the company's UK marketing director Shelly Pearce recently commenting that "many people don't know what" the console actually is.