Nintendo: Industry must innovate

If the games industry wants to be prosperous and successful, it must create innovative experiences that catch gamers by surprise. That's according to Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, who told investors this week that the future of gaming is not about enhancing graphics or power, but rather about creating all-new experiences for players.

"It is natural that there will be more things that battery-run devices can do thanks to technological advances, and game consoles will become more powerful," Iwata said. "However, if we try to linearly pursue this direction, software development will become so complicated that we will eventually face a situation where cost recovery becomes a serious issue."

To this end, Iwata said it is not important for the industry to focus only on beefing up power and graphics, but rather on launching all-new initiatives.

"Therefore, we feel that we are nearing a saturation point in terms of simply improving performance or enhancing graphics," he added. "What is far more important for the future of video games is whether we can make new propositions in other aspects and create games out of something that people never expected to see in the form of a game."