Nintendo CEO Delivers Wii News, Surprises at GDC
After kicking off on Monday, the Game Developers Conference being held at San Francisco’s Moscone Center is well underway, and today the conference brought in one of the industry’s most respected executives, Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo, to deliver a keynote address.
Iwata, who last took the stage at GDC just before releasing the Wii in 2006, took no time to tell the audience of peers and press that Nintendo has shipped more than 50 million units of its popular Wii gaming console worldwide, making it the fastest-selling game console in history.
In the month of February alone, 750,000 of Nintendo’s Wii consoles were sold in the United States, according to the NPD Group. In the same month, Microsoft sold 391,000 Xbox 360 units and Sony sold 276,000 PlayStation 3 units.
Nintendo has also sold 588,000 portable DS players, while Sony sold just under 200,000 PlayStation Portable units.
“It is in the power of game developers to invent things that gamers have never seen — or even imagined — before,” Iwata said.
Third-Party Developers
After briefly talking about the success of Nintendo’s Wii, Iwata did not hesitate addressing what has been on third-party developers’ minds for some time: whether they can continue to successfully sell their games on the Wii platform.
More third-party games were sold for the Wii last year than for any other platform, Iwata said, according to GameSpot, which blogged live during the event.
“We all work in a time of rapid change,” Iwata told the audience. “When this is the case, it is normal for people, even game developers, to feel unsettled.”
“Other people believe that only Nintendo software [is successful] on Nintendo systems,” Iwata added. “Later, I will explain why this is not the case, but that I understand the concern.”
Surprises for Consumers
Before announcing a few surprises for consumers, the…
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