FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Tech

Nintendo’s New President Promises the NX Console Won’t Be Another Wii U

Tatsumi Kimishima says the NX will be something “unique and different.”
Rachel Pick
New York, US

In an interview with Time magazine, recently appointed Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima talked about his company's plans to stay relevant in an era of smartphones and first-person shooters, as well as Nintendo's mysterious new gaming console, codenamed NX.

Appointed president after the passing of Satoru Iwata this past July, Kimishima is already notorious in gaming circles for having correctly predicted that Wii U, Nintendo's last console, would not sell as well as its predecessor. (Kimishima tells Time that he was incorrectly quoted as saying it would be a "failure.")

Advertisement

But Kimishima's main criticism—that the Wii U was too similar to the original Wii, and thus would draw fewer sales—implies that NX will be a big departure from what Nintendo has been doing for the past several years. Says Kimishima, "I can assure you we're not building the next version of Wii or Wii U. It's something unique and different. It's something where we have to move away from those platforms in order to make it something that will appeal to our consumer base." Aside from that, Kimishima said Nintendo will not release more details on the NX until the new year.

Image: Nintendo

Kimishima also discussed Nintendo's first mobile game Miitomo, slated to be released in March of 2016. It's been billed as a "social networking game," a premise which is already drawing criticism from the gaming community.

Nintendo: YOU WANT APPS? *dumps pile of broken miis on table HERE'S YOUR APPS
— Luke Plunkett (@LukePlunkett) October 29, 2015

Asked by Time whether Western users would understand the appeal of Miitomo when it's released, Kimishima admitted, "I don't think we have been able to successfully communicate what we're trying to do at this point…From now until [March] we're going to be thinking about what we'll do to promote this application, and what we can do to make sure that it is understood by our prospective consumers."

Which doesn't really answer the question, so looks like Nintendo fans will have to wait for Spring to see if Miitomo delivers.