Nintendo recently announced a drastic price cut to the 3DS, followed shortly thereafter by a fiscal forecast outlining the losses they’ve suffered so far this fiscal year. However, Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata denies that smartphone games have effected the success of the 3DS, pointing instead to the need for quality software.
“We have repeatedly investigated whether social games, as well as smartphones, are actually affecting our business. We got the same results in our latest research that there are no causal correlations,” said Iwata. “On the other hand, it is the fact that a great variety of games are available at very low prices for smartphones. Naturally, consumers will choose more affordable ones if the video games we provide do not have much more value than those available for smartphones.
“However,” he insisted, “no causal correlations have been confirmed because we think there are consumers who acknowledge that the value of what we offer does not equal to that of those available for smartphones and that what we offer holds unique value. The biggest reason of the sluggish sales in this first quarter is that there were no big hit software titles in this period.”
