Iwata: Industry's 'Slow Sales Due To Lack Of Great Software'

A broad dearth in game quality has negatively affected the U.S. video game industry revenues significantly more than the country's recession, according to Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata, who believes his company's 3DS can inject new experiences into the market. "My belief is we should not blame the bad economy for the cause of slow sales of video games," Iwata said in a VentureBeat interview. "The slow sales must be due to the lack of great software that everyone wants to buy." "This is not the problem of Nintendo alone, but the entire video game industry," he added, echoing a sentiment similar to one expressed by Nintendo design chief Shigeru Miyamoto earlier this year. According to Iwata, modern video game consumers wear out new gameplay concepts much faster than they used to, putting more pressure on developers to innovate. "[This year's] titles might have been big hits three years ago. But now this year, they are not selling that much," he explained. "People get tired of games more quickly than they did before." With the launch of the Nintendo 3DS, which can display 3D graphics without the need for special glasses, Iwata thinks Nintendo will have a fresher palette from which to paint. "We recognize [the 3DS' solution] will not be eternally appealing," the exec acknowledged. "However, it's not a shallow concept that can be forgotten as a momentary fad." As for his competitors' attempts to innovate on the hardware front, Iwata was unsurprisingly skeptical, at least publicly. "Asking consumers to pay more for additional hardware is not ideal," he said. "If I were one of the developers for Kinect or Move, I would wonder if Microsoft or Sony would have a large enough installed base of this accessory to justify investment in a game."