Nintendo’s New President Says The NX Will Be A Departure From The Wii
For nearly ten years, Nintendo has been riding the “Wii” brand through good times (2006 through 2009) and bad (2010 and beyond). They managed to hit the sweet spot of mainstream 2006 culture, but the world changes quickly, and the casual audience that bought over 100 million Wii consoles had little interest in upgrading, being amused by their phones instead.
Nintendo’s new president Tatsumi Kimishima is aware of this, and in a new interview with TIME that went up three days ago, he mentioned among other things that it was time for Nintendo to move on from the Wii brand, and that the NX would be something different.
“As far as NX goes, I’ve said it’s different and obviously a new experience,” he tells me. “If you look back to the beginning of our conversation today, we talked about the transition from Wii hardware to the Wii U hardware and how difficult it is to explain to the consumer base what is different and new about the new hardware. It’s difficult to convince them to switch from their current platform to the next platform.”
“That being said, I can assure you we’re not building the next version of Wii or Wii U. It’s something unique and different. It’s something where we have to move away from those platforms in order to make it something that will appeal to our consumer base.”
But why “the NX”? Does the codename mean anything? Kimishima admitted that, actually, he has no idea where it came from.
“As for the codename NX, I don’t believe that there’s any real meaning behind it, and to be perfectly honest, I don’t know where it came from,” says Kimishima, laughing when I ask. “Or perhaps Mr. Iwata had meant to tell me and then never got the chance.”
There is much more in Kimishima’s interview with TIME. Click here to read the full piece.