Unpublished Satoru Iwata Interview About Nintendo DS and…

Summary

A rare 2004 interview with Satoru Iwata reveals Nintendo's approach to new hardware and competition with Sony and Microsoft.
Iwata's transparency and accessibility in the interview offers insight into his perspective during a critical time for Nintendo.

A previously unseen interview with former Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has emerged after 20 years. The interview, conducted at 2004's E3, covers topics such as Nintendo's ethos for introducing new hardware, Iwata's views on competitors Sony and Microsoft, and how it felt to inherit the company from Hiroshi Yamauchi, who served as Nintendo's president from 1949 to 2002.

Iwata served as Nintendo's president from 2002 to 2015 and had only been president for two years in the interview. During his time as president, he would become highly respected among the gaming industry and gaming consumers, and there would be many tributes to Satoru Iwata after his death. At this time, Nintendo had just introduced the DS and wouldn't release the Wii for another two years. Iwata would rarely give one-on-one interviews as president, outside of his "Iwata Asks" segments, making this an incredibly rare opportunity. Despite Iwata's avoidance of them, Adam Doree of defunct gaming site Kikizo managed to secure and record this interview, releasing it 20 years later.

In the 30-minute interview, Iwata, translated by Yasuhiro Minagawa, is asked about whether he worries about the competition from Microsoft and Sony. "I don't think the next-generation consoles that Sony and Microsoft are considering have a future," he explains. "If I thought so, [Nintendo] would be doing the same thing, right?" Iwata also discusses the changing roles of Shigeru Miyamoto, who was being encouraged to focus more on first-party titles, and outgoing Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi, including his place on the Nintendo board of directors and how he contributed to Nintendo at the time.

Interview Finds Iwata and Nintendo at Critical Juncture

This was a period of great change for Nintendo, as Iwata was only a couple of years into his presidency and the DS was about to radically change the handheld gaming marketplace, followed by the Wii and all the Wii games designed for motion controls. For perspective, the Sony PlayStation Portable was also releasing soon and the PlayStation 3 would release soon after that, but not before the Xbox 360 would also make its appearance. With those competitors in mind, Iwata takes great care to discuss what Nintendo is doing differently and how that makes a difference to general consumers and Nintendo fans.

While many Nintendo fans began to recognize him through Iwata's interview series with developers at Nintendo, "Iwata Asks," this particular interview gives a look at the newly minted president of Nintendo as he begins to develop an image of transparency and accessibility that would make him beloved by fans until his death in 2015. Doree's interview offers a look at Iwata during a critical part of Nintendo's history and provides a valuable view into his mindset as he enters into this fascinating period for the company.

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