Nintendo's CEO and president, Satoru Iwata, rejected the idea of his company developing for Apple's iOS devices in the company's recent shareholder meeting. The executive took an Apple-like approach to software himself and said that Nintendo's games were inseparable from the hardware. Their devices, he told the Sankei Shinbun, were likely to dilute the experience.
"Nintendo is defined by integrated hardware and software," Iwata said. "Others are incompatible with the values Nintendo puts into its hardware. We won't produce software [for them] at all."
The call for support came as shareholders were curious about whether Nintendo would support other, "interesting" platforms. It still has the largest dedicated mobile gaming platform in the DS series, but it has faced a steadily dropping sales rate. Most attribute this not just to the six-year age of the main DS hardware but also the effect of iPhones and iPods as gamers choose just one device over the DS and a separate media player or phone.
Nintendo has had a poor experience with third-party platforms as it outsourced games for the Philips CD-i that were criticized both for their quality and for the choice of console.
