In a recent interview with IGN, Shuhei Yoshida, President of Worldwide Studios for Sony Computer Entertainment, described why his company and hardcore gamers need Nintendo to survive: because they introduce people to traditional gaming.
"Well I have two Wii Us. I play Wii U games with my daughters, because they make pretty fun family friendly games. I think success or making mistakes depends on how you set your goal," said Yoshida. "I don’t know what was Nintendo’s goal when they launched Wii U. To me, it was a bit confusing because what they do really well was create some very safe environment for anyone, especially children to enjoy games, like induct those people who have never played games ever to become gamers. And they always do very well."
"To me, what they have made with Wii U was continuing what they were doing well. But the messaging, when they were saying ‘we are for core gamers,’ was a bit confusing. But this year, I think they slightly changed their messaging, and it seems to me like they are coming back to where they are focused."
When casual gaming from smartphones and tablets came into the conversation, Yoshida explained that Nintendo needs to succeed so they can continue to expose a large audience to gaming that uses physical buttons and controllers.
"When you look at the situation around Nintendo that way, do you characterize Nintendo as our competition? I think in the bigger scale of things happening in the industry or tech or people’s lives, how they play games on what device, and how they start to learn to play games, I think Nintendo and us are pretty much in the same group, and we need Nintendo to be very successful to help induct as many consumers who like to play games with controllers, right?"
Based on his comments on messaging, Yoshida and Sony most likely learned from Nintendo’s marketing mistakes to make it a strong goal to be clear in what they wanted to convey in regards to the PlayStation 4.
Do you agree with Yoshida’s opinion on Nintendo? Let us know in the comments if you think Nintendo needs to stick around for traditional gaming to survive.