Nintendo Pres. Pushes for Innovation

Nintendo President Satoru Iwata told attendees of the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, Calif., that they must break out of the mold Thursday, and challenged them to create bold new games. The company will provide the tools for them to do so as Revolution draws closer to launch, he assured.

Iwata has said previously that game developers were focusing too much on sequels of popular games, rather than creating innovative new games.

Thus, Nintendo is aiming to push the envelope with the Revolution. The innovative new controller has a lot to do with that, he said. Nintendo believes that developers would be able to create completely new experiences due to its design, which controls action on the screen by the movement of the controller itself.

"This new approach is like stepping onto an unexplored continent for the first time, with all the potential for discovery that suggests," Iwata told attendees. "No one else can match the environment we're creating for expanding the game experience to everyone. Our path is not linear, but dynamic."

Iwata said software to create these experiences will be made available via download through Nintendo's virtual console service. This same service will also allow consumers to download and play hundreds of games from all its past consoles.

To further this concept, Iwata also announced it had signed deals with Sega and Hudson to emulate their consoles as well. Nearly 1,000 Sega Genesis games will be made available, as well as those from the TurboGrafx console, jointly developed between NEC and Hudson.

Returning to the subject of the controller, Iwata shared with attendees that the company had gone through hundreds of sketches and dozens of prototypes before settling on the current design. He says the controller is Nintendo's "method to disrupt the market," and realizes a "new way to connect a player to his game."