Iwata: Online to be a "product-by-product decision"

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has said that the company is "dissatisfied" with its online efforts, and plans to remedy this in the future.

However, dissatisfaction aside, Iwata said that online will only be considered on a title-by-title basis.

"I have heard commentary that people feel that Nintendo’s online functionality is behind the others or is lacking in some ways," said Iwata in an investor Q&A. "And I can say that we are not currently satisfied with the online efforts that we have made so far, and we are working at ways to improve those.

"On the other hand, I do not think that online functionality is something that we should be devoting resources to for every single product. Instead, I think that Nintendo’s ability to create an offline experience that feels incredibly unique and compelling is a particular strength that we have.

"Going forward, what we will continue to do is to evaluate the individual products and experience that we’re creating on a product-by-product basis, and make a decision as to whether or not it’s more important to devote resources to making that offline experience more fun and compelling for products where that is going to be the most important element of the game play; and then for products where it is going to be more important, to add online functionality and make that online functionality robust and compelling.

"We will continue to focus our efforts there when it’s appropriate, but it’s going to be a product-by-product decision".

Iwata's response stemmed from a question asking why New Super Mario Bros. Wii lacked online, which Iwata said was a decision made solely by Miyamoto and that there "are limits to elements of development, like time, manpower and resources".

Sounds like no matter how big Nintendo is, a budget is a budget after all.

We'll ask what these "limits" are just for clarification, though.

Thanks, Edge.