Nintendo Chief Goes His Own Way (afp)

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Fri May 20, 9:16 AM ET LOS ANGELES (AFP) - In the cut-throat world of computer gaming, president Satoru Iwata says it pays to be original. If that means taking a risk from time to time, then so be it.

Iwata, interviewed by AFP at the world's biggest computer games expo here, says his Japanese company will continue to do things its own way despite seeing its bigger rivals Sony and Microsoft eat into its market share.

Sony and Microsoft used the "E3" Electronic Entertainment Expo to show off their next-generation home consoles. Nintendo, however, kept the specifications of its own forthcoming machine, "Revolution", largely under wraps.

"It doesn't make sense for us to show things new in terms of specifics. What is important for customers is being able to touch it and to play," said Iwata, who was born in 1959 and rose to prominence as a creator of hit video games.

"And in this industry it is easy to imitate. A brand new idea can easily be taken by competitors.

"Some have stolen ideas as Sony did in the Rumble Pack case," Iwata said, referring to a plagiarism row over game controllers that vibrate.

For years, Nintendo had the market sewn up for consoles both large and small, either for home machines that hook up to televisions or for portable devices like the smash-hit "Game Boy".

But in the mid-1990s, Sony stole its Japanese rival's thunder with the advent of the original PlayStation, which featured a line-up of games that appealed to an older clientele than the quirky Nintendo titles.

Then Microsoft in 2001 brought out its first gaming hardware in the form of the , which now outsells Nintendo's GameCube everywhere except in Japan.

And most recently, Sony has launched the PlayStation Portable, which is going head to head with the current hand-held Nintendo, the DS, and the upcoming Game Boy Micro.

Both the new PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 promise oodles of processing capacity in a bid to make the gaming experience ever more life-like. But for Iwata, size isn't everything.

While its bigger competitors stress the searing power of their machines, Nintendo says the Revolution will wield a secret weapon in the form of a downloadable database of two decades of games titles including firm favourites such as the Super Mario and Donkey Kong series.

"Looking back at the history of video games, hardware manufacturers were trying to intensify processing power of the CPU, but we will see a kind of limit in doing so in the future," Iwata said.

"Today we hear that spending two or three times more in development costs makes sense if you can enjoy two or three times the sales. We will oppose that kind of theory. We will support interesting and big ideas."

Interesting ideas like the "Nintendogs," an achingly cute collection of computer-generated puppies who wag, roll over and fetch in response to a user's swish of a plastic pen etched across the screen of the Nintendo DS.

"Nintendogs did not require a huge budget to develop but Nintendo is about selling the big idea," Iwata said.

"We are trying to provide small publishers and developers with the opportunity to make their dream come true.

"If only the big title can survive, there is no room for small talent. Without that, the industry will shrink." RECOMMEND THIS STORY Recommend It: Not at All Somewhat Moderately Highly Very Highly

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