Nintendo has never had much of a hold on the South African gaming market, which is technically classes as an emerging market as far as most international companies are concerned. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, since we’ll probably be on the roster for Nintendo’s new initiative, which is the creation and launch of consoles and gaming hardware for emerging markets.
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, speaking in an interview with Bloomberg, has revealed that the company has plans to create all-new hardware for certain markets rather than just repackaging a cheaper version of their existing products and releasing them in places where sales are less impressive.
Iwata said “We want to make new things, with new thinking rather than a cheaper version of what we currently have. The product and price balance must be made from scratch.”
A country mentioned specifically in the Bloomberg report is China, which recently repealed a ban on gaming consoles and which is the prime target for Microsoft as well as Nintendo, and likely Sony as well, as an untapped gaming market. Other countries, like Brazil and hopefully South Africa, should also see something new in the hardware line from Nintendo in 2015.
