Nintendo: Low Prices Means the 'Industry Will Fold'

Nintendo's Saturo Iwata is a passionate man - thank goodness - and one to be listened to intently when it comes to the games industry. He's just slammed the Freemium model of game sales as well as the policy of slowly extracting cash from gamers via DLC.

Up front and unembarrassed to be so, the Nintendo president states: "I’m not interested in offering software for free of charge. That’s because I myself am one of the game developers, who in the future wants to make efforts so the value of the software will be appreciated by the consumers."

And he's not backing down, stating that, "If you say freemium is somewhere you can spur new revenue, once again, the answer is the same. Just because many other people are thinking that way, we aren’t thinking that way."

He sees the whole issue of pricing to bleed the consumer, in fact, as incredibly damaging:

"If we were simply going to say OK, the only the way we could sell more products is by decreasing the price, then there wouldn’t be a bright future and the entire industry will fold.

"When we look at the entire system of freemium, it’s not always that everyone is happy with the offers. Actually, there’s only a limited number of people who are willing to pay and many others are not paying for game titles at all."

And then, in what could be the bravest or most suicidal statement made in gaming in the last five years regarding whether his company will drop prices, indulge in DLC or go Freemium:

"Nintendo is not interested."

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Via WSJ