Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata made waves at GDC when he warned the industry against the dangers of low quality social and mobile games. Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime is reinforcing that, saying there’s a definite line they want to draw between who they want to deal with and who they do not.

“I would separate out the true independent developer vs. the hobbyist,” says Fils-Aime. “We are absolutely reaching out to the independent developer. Where we’ve drawn the line is we are not looking to do business today with the garage developer. In our view, that s not a business we want to pursue.”

“Look at the music industry,” he noted. “There are certainly highly talented people who work other jobs and have a passion to be in the music industry. They work at it. There are reality TV shows that revolve around this concept. I love it when there’s a game that’s found that captures people’s imagination, just like that singer toiling in a factory.”

The problem, as Fils-Aime sees it, is that current market trends with cheap and free game apps imply that games have little to no worth. “When we talk about the value of software, it could be a great $1 piece of content or a $50 piece of content,” he says. “The point is: Does it maintain its value over time or is it such disposable content that the value quickly goes to zero We want consumers to see value in the software, whatever that appropriate value is. And we want to see that value maintained over time.”

Meanwhile, Fils-Aime denied any plans of Nintendo to replace the Wii. “The Wii has a long life in front of it,” he says. “We’re still sitting at $199. There are a variety of marketing tools at our disposal.”

Source: Gamasutra