Nintendos Big Guns Air DS/Wii Thoughts News

Following a breakdown of business strategies, pie charts, graphs, and figures at the recent Corporate Management Policy Briefing, Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto and Satoru Iwata took the time to answer a number of questions on the Wii, DS and Nintendo's place in the industry.

At first glace, it may appear that they reiterate a number of points made in the past, including the expected six million sold Wii units by the end of the fiscal year. However, reading into the answers to some questions poses yet further questions.

With Japan continuing to go DS Lite crazy, North America off to massive sales of the handheld within days of launch, and its immanent arrival on European soil, Iwata-san spoke at length about the situation. Explaining that the shortages in Japan were down to difficulties with moulding yields, the Nintendo boss said, "We could have made a lot more DS Lite if we had had compromised on the quality level, but we have never wanted to do so. We do not want to compromise on the quality level of our commodities." The continued supply of the DS is obviously an important question for many, especially when Christmas is looming (hey, it's only six months away people), something that Iwata reassured:

"...we will be in a position to produce more than 2 million DS Lite hardware per month during the summer. We will allocate them for the global markets and that includes the ones to be kept for the year-end sales in each territory."

Further to earlier figures, Iwata-san also confirmed that Nintendo expected to ship up to 4 million Wii units by the end of the calendar year - so between the two platforms get your lists into Santa pretty sharpish this year kids.

Most tantalising of all, as if Christmas was enough, was Miyamoto's cryptic answer to a question on his current workload, in which he replied, "I am doing something lately, but I think I need to refrain from talking about it today. Hopefully, I can tell you what it is in 6 months or so." So what could that 'something' be? Pikmin Wii, perhaps?

Miyamoto did however reveal his satisfaction with the Wii hardware, commenting that, "I have never felt that Wii needs more processing power...I have never felt stress about the power of Wii. Honestly, I have not been able to use 100% of GameCube's power yet, so I am very happy with Wii's far superior functionality."

The DS Lite and 'Full Fat' aren't the only handhelds to be released in the last couple of years by the big N - the tiny GameBoy Micro also hit stores, but it seems that it didn't quite do the job. Speaking about the smallest GameBoy ever released, Iwata-san said, "The sales of Micro did not meet our expectations...those who were impressed with Micro were the ones who have physically touched and felt Micro in their hands. However, the actual consumers had to evaluate Micro without touching them. In the end, we failed to explain to consumers its unique value and they concluded that Micro is not worth the price they have to invest."

So there you have it, an insight into Nintendo's top brass and their thoughts. Stay tuned for what Miyamoto-san has up his sleeves in six months, just before we all dig into our Christmas roast.

We'll have more news shortly...