Nintendo Europe managing director David Gosen said during the ELSPA Games Summit in London, that Microsoft is wrong for attempting to drive the industry to a hardware transition too early, and that the games media too should place less emphasis on the next generation, according to GamesIndustry.biz.
Gosen said that the mindset of a "five to six years is right, and come what may, we're going to stick to it" cycle is not how we should be approaching the industry. He said that while it might be hard to break out of such a routine, the future of the games industry depends upon it.
He also commented on Microsoft, saying that games profitability "is not their key motivation" in aiming to launch the next Xbox by 2005, after only a four year lifespan for the original console.
"In every cycle, some manufacturer not profiting from the current cycle is eager to kick-start the next one," he said. He then gave failed examples such as the 3DO, which launched ahead of the Nintendo 64, Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn.
He also said the media was focusing too much on the next-generation. "For every game magazine editor bored with current products, there are hundreds of thousands of gamers around the world just discovering them," he said.
"Hard as it may be for those editors to believe, not everyone outside their circle is prepared to pay a high price for a new console," he said. "Today's gamers are still hungry for today's games." Gosen pointed to a statistic which showed that 33 percent of GameCube buyers last Christmas already owned a PS2 or Xbox.
He also paralleled Nintendo president Satoru Iwata's recent comments, saying that publishers have been focusing too much on a single demographic of consumers - and not appealing to women and other audiences. He feels Nintendo has the experience and know-how to best handle these console transitions.