Iwata: 3DS was not designed with iPhone in mind

By Joe Anderson

Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata has said the company “never thought” of iPhone and iPod when designing 3DS.

Speaking in an interview with Venture Beat, Iwata said Nintendo preferred to focus on what it does best.

“I personally am a user of iPhones and iPods,” he said. “I think of what these mean to me as a competitor. But I never thought of them when we were designing the 3DS.

“If some people think that this might be the answer to the iPhone, then that should simply be the result. That is, it was not our goal to do that, but if people think that, it is the result. We never try to think in terms of any competitive product or company. If you do that, you just focus on a certain narrow area. Rather, we should think much more broadly. Anything that takes the time of a consumer might take away their interest in gaming, or their energies away from our products.

“Anything that does that should be our competition. We should not narrowly define our competition as Apple, Sony or Microsoft. We have to think of what kinds of experiences we can create that only Nintendo can create, and what no other companies can create. The result is the Nintendo 3DS. If you say it is a solution against what Apple offers today, it is also a solution against all of the other competition.”

Nintendo unveiled 3DS at its E3 conference last week.

The device will launch in all major markets before the end of March 2011.