Former Nintendo president Satoru Iwata blamed the public's perception of gaming as non-standard for the GameCube's poor sales, says Nintendo executive Shigeru Miyamoto. This led to the development of the DS and Wii as a way to attract both gamers and "non-gamers."
In an interview with Famitsu, that's been translated by GamesRadar+, Miyamoto discusses why Nintendo chose such unique input methods for both the DS and the Wii. He claims that the GameCube's poor sales was the catalyst for discussions at the company about why consoles solely dedicated to video games might fail to sell.
"Before we made the DS, there was the highly versatile, simple to use, easy for any developer to make games for, cheap to buy, Nintendo GameCube, but it didn't get the reception we expected," Miyamoto laments. "Some consoles sold well for what they were, but there were also a lot of people who bought them to watch DVDs. The GameCube was only purchased by gamers."
Both of the competing consoles that outsold the GameCube, the PS2 and original Xbox, featured a DVD player. The Xbox is particularly notable as the new console on the block without a proven track record of excellent games that Nintendo had.
"At that time, we analyzed the [sales] numbers of dedicated game consoles, and [late-Nintendo president Satoru] Iwata identified that part of the reason [for poor sales] is that 'being a gamer has not been normalized all over the world,'" Miyamoto says. "If you think about it, we don't say 'book readers and non-book readers.' Though maybe people do nowadays."
Nintendo has done a lot over the years to normalize gaming, and Miyamoto says he often spoke with Iwata about how video games should be for "everyone and their mom." However, despite how widespread gaming is, it still fails to integrate into our speech as we still say gamer, but as Miyamoto points out, we don't say things like 'reader' or 'watcher,' for hobbies that are considered 'normal.'
"We were making products for one type of customer, but we were discussing how there was a time when Nintendo was a company that handled a wide variety of entertainment worldwide," he says. "The conclusion we drew from these discussions was that if we design a complicated controller like the ones currently made for consoles, then we'll never attract non-gamers. We didn't want to be restricted by making a 'video game console,' but instead make a 'new tool for play.'"
Both the Wii and DS were famous for their popularity with people who had never purchased a console before. Games like Wii Sports, Wii Fit, and Brain Training all offered people who didn't usually play video games a more mainstream and easy to understand way to play.
"So when it came to the DS, we wrote taglines for every player like 'everyone is at the starting line' and 'play with just one pen.' For the Wii it was something like 'Use your body to play,'" Miyamoto says. "With the DS and the Wii, we wanted to spread video game consoles as a new way to play, quickly all around the world, and that worked to some extent. I think that made us conscious of creating a [hardware] interface as part of play. I think that was a big deal."
