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Iwata and Miyamoto try to figure out the DSi

It’s not competing with the iPhone. Despite all evidence to the contrary. Apparently

Iwata and Miyamoto try to figure out the DSi
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Over on the official Nintendo DSi page, the transcript of a round table discussion between some of Nintendo’s biggest names - mainly president Satoru Iwata and game guru Shigeru Miyamoto - has been posted to help illustrate why you ought to buy a DSi.

Although it’s hard to see the men with the electric cattle prods keeping them all on topic in the photographs, they’ve clearly been tasked with promoting a strategy that, until now, has always proven successful for Nintendo.

Their job at this forced back-slapping exercise was to convince us that the DSi isn’t directly competing with any other platforms - particularly the iPhone.

“Nintendo doesn’t have any intention of directly competing with existing products, but the mass media has a tendency to portray everything as a rivalry between opposing companies,” says Iwata.

“It seems some people have the impression that we want to compete with cell phones or the iPod, that putting cameras or music players in our devices is out of character for us.”

Admittedly, as part of that mass media, we at Pocket Gamer would indeed suggest that the DSi is very much in competition with the iPhone and iPod touch. And if it isn’t, it bloody well should be.

Miyamoto inadvertently summarises Nintendo’s underlying (and rather defeatist) attitude to direct competition while speechifying about the DSi’s development process: “Work in competition with others isn’t very enjoyable. When you’re competing with someone, unless you really beat your rival, you don’t win any praise.”

If Nintendo doesn’t intend to take competition with the iPhone seriously - as suggested here by Iwata and Miyamoto - then the DSi may find the rest of this hardware generation a bit less comfortable that it had hoped.

Spanner Spencer
Spanner Spencer
Yes. Spanner's his real name, and he's already heard that joke you just thought of. Although Spanner's not very good, he's quite fast, and that seems to be enough to keep him in a regular supply of free games and away from the depressing world of real work.