miyamoto.jpgNintendo legend Shigeru Miyamoto said in an interview with BusinessWeek that the Wii was supposed to be a sub-$100 console, where the focus was on the software, and not hardware. New technology however, increased the price drastically. He said,

“My idea was to spend nothing on the console technology so all the money could be spent on improving the interface and software. If we hadn’t used NAND flash memory [to store data such as games and photos] and other pricey parts, we might have succeeded.”

He added that while they settled with the wireless motion controller, it still took them a long time (over a year) to tweak and modify so it worked properly.

“It worked just fine in the ideal environment, but bright lights and sunlight interfered with its accuracy. And we had to test it in rooms of all sizes. The final version wasn’t finished until this summer.”

The Wii launches later this month in the US, while Japan and Europe will have to wait until early December. 32 Wii games and 30 Virtual Console games will be available this year.

Read [Thanks, Anuban]

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Tags: Business, GameCube, Hardware, Technology, Wii