A lot of analysts believe that it is about time Nintendo abandons its increasingly failing hardware market and focus on being one of the world’s top game development houses. After months of ignoring those suggestions, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has finally explained the logic behind the company’s commitment to hardware development and production.
"If I was to take responsibility for the company for just the next one or two years, and if I was not concerned about the long-term future of Nintendo at all, it might make sense for us to provide our important franchises for other platforms, and then we might be able to gain some short-term profit," he said.
"However, I'm really responsible for the long-term future of Nintendo as well, so I would never think about providing our precious resources for other platforms at all."
Iwata believes that by abandoning hardware development, Nintendo would be abandoning one of the factors that made their IPs unique and valuable in the first place.
"What I believe is that Nintendo is a very unique company, because it does its business by designing and introducing people to hardware and software - by integrating them, we can be unique. And because we have hardware and software developers in the same building, they stimulate each other," he explained.
"And those kinds of conditions have enabled us to create something that no other companies can create. Those kinds of backgrounds are there behind the fact that such a number of great Nintendo franchises exist, and those great franchises always shine for people around the world."