Nintendo is developing new consoles for emerging markets

You thought Nintendo wasn’t thinking about making new platforms? Well, you were wrong! The Wii U and 3DS aren’t the only pieces of hardware Nintendo has up its sleeve at the moment, but the catch is that these new consoles are probably not for you. In an interview with Bloomberg, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata explained the company’s desire to start tapping “emerging markets” with new and cheaper consoles developed with a target audience’s budget in mind.

Nintendo Co. (7974), the Japanese video-game company struggling to win over consumers with its latest generation of consoles, plans to expand in emerging markets with new devices starting next year. The Kyoto-based company will develop completely new game machines for emerging markets rather than sell cheaper versions of existing devices such as the Wii U, President Satoru Iwata said in an interview today. Nintendo is also planning to boost the use of characters such as Mario by offering figurines that will allow the transfer of game information between devices through near field communications. Nintendo has resisted making its games available on smartphones because it doesn’t see a sustainable way to make money in a business with such boom-and-bust cycles, said Iwata, who has been president since 2002. Making products specifically for emerging markets is a change for the company, which until now has sold the same products globally.