“Nintendo’s president shrugged off the just unveiled iPad tablet computer from Apple as delivering ‘no surprises,’ and displayed as little enthusiasm for 3-D technology and high-definition upgrades for games. ‘It was a bigger iPod Touch,’ Satoru Iwata said of the much anticipated device shown Wednesday by Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs,” Yuri Kageyama.
MacDailyNews Take: The iPad FUD talking points memo begins with “It’s just a bigger iPod touch.”
Kageyama reports, “He made no pretense to hide he was totally unimpressed with the iPad. ‘There were no surprises for me,’ said Iwata.”
“Apple says the iPad is a new kind of mobile device that is more intimate than a laptop but is packed with more functions than a mobile phone,” Kageyama reports.
Kageyama reports, “On Thursday, Nintendo reported April-December profit fell 9 percent as solid year-end sales failed to make up for the weak results for the earlier part of the fiscal year, a rising yen and a price cut for the Wii.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We expected more from Nintendo’s president. Like manners and some imagination, to name just two. Of course, seeing Apple’s A4 SoC, a faster, more efficient processor than NIntendo (or anyone else) can buy off the shelf along with DS/DSi sales evaporating before your very eyes can take its toll, we suppose.
You know what’s so great about Nintendo’s DSi? You can set up your WiFi at Nintendo’s system level with, say, a WEP security password and then run a game and, for some incomprehensible reason (to an Apple product user at least), be asked to set up WiFi again, this time within the game itself which, oh by the way, doesn’t work with a WEP password. Then you get to reset your WiFi base station and try all versions of WPA passwords which also don’t work, so you resort to opening up your WiFi to the world, so that your daughter can download a heavily-pixellated rhinestone-studded denim skirt. Then you get to reactivate your WiFi’s WEP password with the anticipation of doing this rigamarole all over again approximately 30 times per day for the next two weeks until your daughter realizes that that her hand-me-down, no-longer-activated, two-and-a-half-year-old original iPhone with the cooler, better-looking games that cost 1/6th the price or less (many of them free) is way, way more fun. Then you get to eBay the DSi at a loss to the next sucker and get on with your life. Thanks for spending so much time thinking out the user experience, Nintendo.
Now STFU and take your medicine like a man, Satoru. And, oh, by the way, nice stylus. (smirk)
Nintendo’s president is exhibiting some of the classic signs that accompany the recognition of harsh reality: Denial, disbelief, and self-delusion.
Reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it. – Jane Wagner
Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces. – Sigmund Freud
They are all scared to death. As a gaming device, the iPad is going to blow your sox off. The few titles shown at the keynote was just freaking amazing and moving the controls around the screen is so futuristic. Can’t wait to get this thing and all the apps designed for it.
No the 1st FUD talking-point is “Its just a big iPhone – but it doesn’t even make phone calls!!”
How can you expect him to like it? He’s already getting killed by the iPhone/iPodTouch. He sees all the Apple devices as the enemy. The iPad is a new and scary threat to his business.
Hey, if all it was, was an iPod touch on steroids, that would be great at $499 – or more! I’m pretty stoked about it.
And just when the fsck did this “Epic fail” geek shit start? Christ, how moronic…
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, and finally you win.
Marketing 101
When first encountering a product that may well mark your demise — a shrug is as good a first response as anything.
Generally followed by denial — then outright panic!
“Now STFU and take your medicine like a man, Satoru.”
Funniest . MDN . Take . Ever !
My kids have Nintendo handhelds, and they connect to our network without a hitch.
I only had to configure them each one time.
That said, they have lost many, many, stylus’.
*shrug*
Heh… I put the italics on the wrong word! LOL!!!
My wife, the gaming nut, has owned nearly every console and handheld Nintendo has ever released. Recently, though, she’s been using her iPod touch more and more for gaming and her DSi much less. It’s probably the convenience more than anything else. For the DSi, she has to decide she wants a game, then make a trip out to Best Buy or GameStop to buy it. With the touch, it’s instant gratification — she reads a good review online, is intrigued, and is playing the game a few minutes later. And since she generally plays one game at a time, that’s bad news for Nintendo.
Nintendo always lags when it comes to modernizing their gaming experience and that’s kicked them in the butt before. They pretty much lost an entire console generation by sticking with cartridges while Sega and Sony moved to discs. Now as gaming is done increasingly online, Nintendo is late to the party. Difficult wireless setup is bad enough, and then there’s the friend code system.
——RM
The irony is that they released a console not to long ago called the DSiXL, and as I recall, that was just a DSi with a bigger screen. Talk about hypocrisy.
That said, I do like my original DS quite a lot. Yes, I appreciate the graphics are pretty terrible now, but it can be a lot of fun.
And for the record, before I get a lot of hate comments, I like the idea of the iPad too.
It’s ok to like more than one product, people. They can coexist together quite happily.
This is an interesting phenomenon. When Apple mentions a rival product they always praise it initially before stating then that they think they can do better. For instance during the iPad presentation Jobs mentioned and complimented the Kindle with no apparent irony (not that I saw anyway…). Compare that to the reaction from rivals to Apple’s products – from Rob Glaser to Steve Ballmer to this Nintendo guy, they all seem to go out of their way to do the adolescent “I’m sooo unimpressed” routine. One would think that if these people had any degree of confidence in their companies’ abilities to produce quality merchandise with a degree of imagination and inventiveness they would welcome the competition, and think that the raising of the bar is a good thing for all concerned. Honestly, given the over-the-top dissing anyone would think they were scared!
@ B
thank you!!! I hate that “epic fail” shit. anyone who says that should be punched once in the face every time they use it
@Lord Robin..
Not to mention you can generally get the lite version or demo of a game to try a level or 2 to see if it`s really to your liking, and yes, no planning anything around it, just find it at on the app store and off you go.
I keep hearing complaints about the lack of multi-tasking, but to date I’ve only heard one scenario:
I Can’t Listen To Pandora While I (surf web, use Pages, etc…)
I’m sure there might be 2 other apps you might want to use at the same time, but it seems no one can really think of any, other than Pandora and Something Else.
Okay, well this is a decent point, for those who don’t already have an iPhone, but I doubt it’s really enough to hump the market. I don’t see a lot of people madly listening to Pandora on their lappys/netbooks while working. Actually, most of the people I see working at wifi cafes have white earbuds disappearing into their pockets, which tells me they have a separate device for music that is not connected to their lappy. This takes some of the wind out of the Pandora argument, but there must be something else to complain about.
I’m wondering what another valid scenario might be – two or more 3rd party apps that you just can’t bear to run alone, that actually do you some good running at the same time. What do you think?
Each to their own is my thought on this matter. I love my mac stuff but also own what I consider to be the finest game machine ever made, namely the SNES. Why do I love that machine after all these years? Because it plays 2D games via a buttoned game pad which suits my 61 year old reactions down to the ground. At the end of the day there’s room enough for everyone in my eyes.
The DS is like something out of the seventies it has nowhere to go compared to the Touch iPhone, iPad. Interaction is the future of gaming as they know well with the Wii though for them the end is nigh as others combine that factor with far more advanced systems on the gaming consoles while in handhelds Apple will do the same to them. They are dead men walking.
@ Klob
I think that Steve might know that Jeff Bezos doesn’t really want to be in the hardware business. My hunch is the Amazon created the Kindle to start a fire under the eBook market (hence the name, right?) but I think they might be perfectly happy to just sell a lot of eBooks and not fuss around with all that hardware production.
There is little reason to buy a dedicated reader now, other than the advantages the Kindle still has, which are few – longer battery life and maybe arguable easier on the eyes (or not). As the iPad improves, those advantages will become less and less significant, and be dwarfed by the advantages of the nearly-full-on computing experience you get on top of your eBook reading.
the wii os mimics os 10.3 blatantly
so much for the big n’s originality
Now, THAT’S what I call a take, MDN!
BFD….who cares what anyone thinks…
I want my iPad now!!!
I hate stupid pepole with NO vision!!
Bite the pillow, Satoru Iwata, bite the pillow.
I love my Wii, but frankly Nintendo – I could use a little innovation in your product line now… the novelty is waring off.
ChrissyOne,
Loopt-type and Messenger-type apps are the other two I hear about.
Neither applies to me, but what does annoy me is to not be able to browse the web while still listening to my baseball game stream from my MLB application.
I bought a DS Lite. Used it three or four times. Gave it away.
With a couple of games it was $250.
The iPad looks like a very good value in comparison. Especially since it will be all the computer many people (and especially kids) will ever need.