Despite the debut of new consoles and a next-generation of games, one of the biggest talking points going into and coming out of E3 2013 concerned Microsoft and Sony's digital rights management, and how each company would be restricting or influencing used game sales, borrowing, lending and more. With Nintendo featuring no restrictions along those lines for Wii U or 3DS, I asked the publisher's global president, Satoru Iwata, for his thoughts on the topic. His solution is remarkably simple.
"The best possible countermeasure against people buying used product is making the kind of product that people never want to sell," Iwata told me, indicating that he'd never considered implementing mechanisms, or "tying down" his company's systems, with the kind of features that would restrict or control what Nintendo customers do with their used games. "Taking as an example Mario Kart or Smash Bros., even though you might think, 'I’ve done enough with this,' you’ll still have second thoughts. 'Wait a minute. If one of my friends comes over, I might need this again.' You’re never going to want to sell these games. That’s something that always occupies our minds. We need to make software that players don’t want to sell."
Iwata seemed disappointed that E3 2013 had become so focused on everything but what ultimately matters most to him and his company - the games.
"We’re competing with each other in terms of who’s creating the most fun games," Iwata said. "Unfortunately, however, as I saw the reports dispatched from E3 this year, they’re pretty much occupied by talk about which machine is more friendly to used games, or which machine is $100 cheaper than the other. I’m sorry that we’re missing the most important discussion – about video games."
