Today i was reading about Iwata`s comments on the whole software/hardware integration at their Q&A back in January and i just read something that was really interesting.
Some shareholder questioned Iwata on the possibility of having a unified platform: "(...)I got the impression that handheld devices and home consoles will first be unified, with handheld devices also functioning as controllers(...)".
Unfortunately for me, as i wanted that to happen, Iwata said no.
But here is where it gets interesting:
"(...)as I explained to you a short while ago [speaking about the president presentation], we are not saying that we are planning to integrate our platforms into one. What we are saying is that we would like to integrate software development methods, operating systems, and built-in software and software assets for each platform so that we can use them across different machines. This means that if we manage to integrate our platforms successfully, we may in fact be able to make more platforms. At the moment, we only have our current handheld devices and home consoles because if we tried to make more platforms, our development resources would be spread too thinly. The more we can share software across different platforms, the more development resources will be left for something else." - http://www.nintendo....31qa/index.html
Did Iwata just confess that Nintendo has intentions on increasing the number of platforms and at the same time, confessing that it didn`t happened so far because of this lack of specific integration?
At first i thought he was giving some example on how Nintendo can benefit from the SW/HW integration, but he`s seems to clearly pointing out at the fact that more platforms from Nintendo could come.
Also, wouldn´t be the first time Nintendo tries out a 3 pillar strategy. Remember NDS? It was supposed to be the 3rd pillar in Nintendo`s strategy.
Haven`t seen this discussed anywhere, so i got to ask, what`s your opinion?