Sony’s Shuhei Yoshida: “We need Nintendo to be very successful”

sony shuhei yoshida

Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida has shared his belief that they “need Nintendo to be very successful,” seeing the company as a necessity in introducing new consumers to the world of gaming.

“We think Nintendo made mistakes with Wii U,” Yoshida stated in an interview with IGN. “I have two Wii Us. I play Wii U games with my daughters, because they make pretty fun family friendly games.”

He continued, “I think success or making mistakes depends on how you set your goal. I don’t know what was Nintendo’s goal when they launched Wii U. To me, it was a bit confusing because what they do really well was create a very safe environment for anyone, especially children, to enjoy games like induct those people who have never played games ever to become a gamer. And they always do very well.

“To me, what they have made with Wii U was continuing what they were doing well. But the messaging when they were saying ‘we are for core gamers’ was a bit confusing. But this year I think they slightly changed their messaging, and it seems to me like they are coming back to where they are focused.”

Asked as to whether the threat from the growing popularity from smartphones and tablets is a danger to Nintendo, Yoshida responded: “When you look at the situation around Nintendo that way, do you characterise Nintendo as our competition?

“I think in the bigger scale of things happening in the industry or tech or people’s lives, how they play games on what device, and how they start to learn to play games, I think Nintendo and us are pretty much in the same group.

“We need Nintendo to be very successful to help induct as many consumers who like to play games with controllers, right? Because we believe they are great things.”

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  1. Nice to see some camaraderie between Nintendo and Sony. Nintendo has always been very good at introducing new people gaming and had amazing success with the Wii. And while the WiiU is off to a bad start the 3DS is currently exploding in popularity. I really like what Shuhei Yoshida says about Nintendo not being direct competition. I personally own a Wii, a WiiU, a PS3, and a 360. It’s not like you have to own only one gaming console!

    While there are some great games out there for phones and tablets I generally prefer controller gaming. Nintendo does a good job introducing these new game players to using controllers, even if they are non-traditional controllers, and I think alongside Sony are doing a very good job at bridging the gap between casual and hardcore gamers.

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