Nintendo poo-poo smartphone rumours
Nintendo’s big console rivals Microsoft and Sony may now be moving into cellular gaming spheres with the advent of Xbox Live Arcade for Windows Phone 7 devices and the PlayStation Suite hitting the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play, but it doesn’t look as though the house of Mario have plans to follow suit any time soon.
Despite putting in a patent application for a games console with phone capabilities way back in 2001, and the fact that the 3DS has lead to a free Wi-Fi hotspot partnership with the AT&T network in the US, Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime has quashed rumours of a Nintendo phone.
“We have no desire to get into telephony,” he told CNN. “We believe that we will earn our way into someone’s pocket without having to offer that (phone capability) as an additional factor.”
“We don’t want to be in the phone business,” Fils-Aime continued. “We don’t see that as an opportunity. Phones are utilities. Phones are not by definition entertainment devices.
“It makes sense to enter a market when you feel you’ve got some sort of competitive advantage. From Nintendo’s perspective, we don’t see that we have a competitive advantage in telephony.”
