Nintendo Planning 'Completely New' Systems for Emerging Markets

On the heels of alarming fiscal figures and plummeting Wii U sales, Nintendo says it plans to design and market entirely new game systems which it hopes to sell in emerging markets, Bloomberg reports.

The idea, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata revealed in a new interview, is to bring new gaming concepts to those markets instead of following competitors’ leads and selling less expensive versions of existing platforms.

“We want to make new things, with new thinking rather than a cheaper version of what we currently have,” said Iwata. “The product and price balance must be made from scratch.”

Iwata also indicated that Nintendo hopes to make headway in the highly popular figurine market, currently dominated by Activision’s Skylanders and Disney’s Infinity series, by selling figures based on Nintendo’s stable of iconic characters, like Mario, Zelda and Donkey Kong. The figurines would communicate with Nintendo’s devices using the near field communications (NFC) technology used by the company’s Wii U games console.Nintendo recently announced an NFC device for its portable 3DS system that allows gamers to scan objects with the device and transfer them to the Wii U.

Under pressure by analysts and pundits to engage the smart device market, Iwata also reiterated Nintendo’s position on smartphones. “We have had a console business for 30 years, and I don’t think we can just transfer that over onto a smartphone model,” he said. Iwata also expressed concern that trying to sell games designed for smartphones might harm other aspects of Nintendo’s business, adding that depending on revenue from smart devices “cannot be a pillar” for the company.

[Bloomberg]

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Write to Matt Peckham at matt.peckham@time.com.