Miyamoto says GameCube's poor sales led to Nintendo DS and Wii

In a recent interview, Shigeru Miyamoto reflected on how Nintendo changed course after the GameCube underperformed and began rethinking who its hardware was really for.

Miyamoto said the GameCube was versatile, simple to use, easy for developers to make games for, and cheap to buy, but it still did not get the reception Nintendo expected. He also recalled the console as one that was bought only by gamers, while some other systems were popular for reasons beyond games themselves.

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That reassessment led Nintendo to a different conclusion: complicated controllers would never attract non-gamers. Miyamoto said the company began framing the DS around ideas like "everyone is at the starting line" and "play with just one pen," while the Wii was presented as a system for "use your body to play."

Nintendo's goal was to spread video game consoles as a new way to play worldwide, and Miyamoto said the DS and Wii made the company think of the hardware interface itself as part of play. The result was a clear change in direction, with Nintendo aiming beyond the people who were already buying consoles.

That strategy worked. The Nintendo DS became the best-selling dedicated handheld system of all time, and the Nintendo Wii remained Nintendo's top-selling home console until the Nintendo Switch surpassed it. Does Nintendo's shift toward non-gamers still define its hardware strategy today?