But president Satoru Iwata insists "it's not as simple as enabling Mario to move on a smartphone"

Nintendo is doing plenty of soul-searching in light of its recent abject commercial performance.

On Friday, the company slashed its annual Wii U sales forecast from 9 million to 2.8 million units - a dramatic reduction that it expects will swing its full-year results from profit to loss.

"We cannot continue a business without winning," Iwata said on Friday during a press conference attended by Bloomberg. "We must take a sceptical approach whether we can still simply make game players, offer them in the same way as in the past for 20,000 yen or 30,000 yen, and sell titles for a couple of thousand yen each.

"We are thinking about a new business structure," Iwata added. "Given the expansion of smart devices, we are naturally studying how smart devices can be used to grow the game-player business. It's not as simple as enabling Mario to move on a smartphone."

Investors and analysts have urged Nintendo to broaden its horizons and boost profits by embracing smartphones on multiple occasions over the past few years, but Iwata has always insisted that his responsibility is to plan for the long term, not simply to make a quick buck.

Iwata also said today that there are no current plans to reshuffle Nintendo's management team, and that any announcement regarding potential pay cuts will be made when the company posts its third-quarter financial results in late January.

Posted: Jan 17, 2014 11:36 am
Related Forum: Gaming Discussion

Source: http://www.computerandvideogames.com/445870/nintendo-thinking-about-a-new-business-structure/