Posted by on under satoru iwata, fri, financial times, business model, gaming industry, new business, bets, nintendo, nbsp, ceo, games | 
You may simply be able to chalk this one up to some freewheeling speculation and rumination, but Nintendo CEO
Satoru Iwata went pretty far out on a limb in talking about the future of the company during a recent sit-down with the
Financial Times, and indicated that Nintendo
may just be looking outside the gaming industry for a little inspiration. Apparently, Iwata is intriguiged by the Kindle "because it's a new business model in which the user doesn't bear the communications cost," which he says wouldn't "fit Nintendo customers because we make amusement products." He did go on to note though, that "in reality, if we did this it would increase the cost of the hardware, and customers would complain about Nintendo putting prices up," but said that "it is one option for the future." At the same time, however, Iwata also seemingly downplayed the short-term potential for download-only games, saying that he thinks "it will take quite a long time" for the industry to shift to them -- although he did hedge his bets somewhat by pointing out how unpredictable the games business is.
[Via
Electronista]
Filed under: Gaming
Nintendo's Iwata muses about Kindle-like business model for future handheld originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Tagi: satoru iwata, fri, financial times, business model, gaming industry, new business, bets, nintendo, nbsp, ceo, games
Posted by on under charlie kindel, initial availability, clean slate, iric, xna, extence, experience team, mobile space, flash support, xbox live, recepti, clean break, launch, mix10, flipside, gaming industry, ecosystem, unveiling, apps, good time |
Microsoft is
keen on unveiling the meat of its developer story around
Windows Phone 7 Series at MIX10 in less than two weeks, but with
GDC coming up next week, they're figuring that now is a good time to start dropping hints -- they'll want to be capturing the collective imagination of the gaming industry, after all, what with that
Xbox Live integration they've got going on. To that end, Charlie Kindel of WinPho's developer experience team has outed a few key items at a reception in San Francisco this evening.
The major points are that
Silverlight,
XNA, and .NET will figure prominently into the developer story -- not a surprise considering that Microsoft is heavily invested in both, gaming is central to the Windows Phone 7 Series story, XNA is a big deal on
Zune HD already, and this all lines up with
what we'd heard in the past. In fact, Kindel boldly proclaims that "If you are Silverlight or XNA developer today you're gonna be really happy." On the flipside, it's a bit ironic considering that Silverlight spends much of its existence going head-to-head with
Flash, and all indications are that we won't see Flash support on 7 at initial availability (though it's sounding like a lock post-launch).
One final note at today's event is that Microsoft has now officially confirmed for the first time that 7 represents a clean break from Windows Mobile as we know it today; existing apps won't be compatible. Though that's likely to be a pain for existing owners with specialized apps who are looking to stay in the Microsoft ecosystem, Windows Phone 7 Series itself is a very different beast than the operating system it replaces -- it feels different, seeks a different demographic, and symbolically represents a very important clean-slate departure for a company that had lost its way in the mobile space. The bright side for the 6.5 faithful, we suppose, is that Kindel closes by saying that they "will continue to work with our partners to deliver new devices based on Windows Mobile 6.5 and will support those products for many years to come" -- a message Microsoft has been
echoing recently.
We expect to hear much, much more on this at MIX -- and we might hear a few more tidbits at GDC as well -- but in the meantime, there's a developer Q&A going down on Twitter around 9:00PM ET (check the #wp7dev tag) where we could get some details. Stay tuned.
Microsoft talks Windows Phone 7 Series development ahead of GDC: Silverlight, XNA, and no backward compatibility originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Mar 2010 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Tagi: charlie kindel, initial availability, clean slate, iric, xna, extence, experience team, mobile space, flash support, xbox live, recepti, clean break, launch, mix10, flipside, gaming industry, ecosystem, unveiling, apps, good time
