Nintendo's president, Mr Satoru Iwata (we nearly said, Shigeru Iwata there) has been telling The Wall Street Journal that things are going very nicely thanks.

Sure, the company isn't really going to bother to much with any more Wii peripherals (hello, third parties); and certainly, the Wii Motion Plus (which makes the Wii Remote do what developers thought it could do to start with) hasn't been priced for retail - but "we can make it very affordable"; cripes, even the DS could take on mobile phone-like capabilities. Aside from all that, Nintendo is not going to compete with either Sony or Microsoft in a plethora of online services. Ninty is, after all, "still an entertainment company first and foremost".

In terms of online services, Iwata actually tells Yukari Iwatani Kane at the WSJ, "If we can do something different that plays up our strengths - and broadens what a videogame constitutes - then we might do it. If we have no ideas, we're not going to compete with the exact same services against companies like Sony, which has a movie studio, and Microsoft, which has a lot of money."

So, when he says Nintendo won't compete he qualifies that brilliantly with "exact same services". Nicely equivocated because, of course, 'similar' services would be on the cards.

^{Source: WSJ}