In the last three years or so, Nintendo has gone from being an also-ran in the video-game industry to the leader of the pack. How did it happen?
We need to go a little bit further back, to when we launched the first DS. It was a bit of a step change. But at the time the Sony PSP was coming as well, so there was a certain amount of trepidation with the market. There was a certain amount of, I shouldn’t say fear, but it was obviously a different type of product that we were looking at. But it was a calculated risk; we’d been looking for quite a while at the people we’d been selling to, and it was quite a narrow market. What we wanted to look at was trying to reach people who either didn’t play games or had got bored with them. They told us they were put off by the complication of having lots of buttons to push, they’d got bored and needed something fresh. So, that’s where DS came along. The touch-screen playing was a new interface for the consumer.

So was it calculated, or luck?
I think we were really lucky to some extent, as at the same time as we launched the DS we also had some really good product to go with it. Nintendo has always believed that it’s one thing to have really fantastic hardware but you’ve still got to have the content. The name of the game is the game. That’s what makes us different from other companies.

The success you had with the DS transferred itself, very easily, to the Wii.
When we first showed the Wii, people reacted with shock, as they did with the DS: “Oh my goodness me, you’ve done something completely weird and different. That’s a bit of a risk.” But it wasn’t, because what we’d learnt from the DS we could transfer to the Wii. That’s what we’re trying to become, I suppose, a company that brings technology to people who maybe aren’t normally comfortable with technology.

In the process you seem to have revived the notion of family gaming.
I think a lot of companies take themselves almost too seriously. They forget, in some instances, what they’re in the business for. With us, it’s to provide people with entertainment and fun. If we are not making people smile, we’re not doing our job. And of course, if you have a lot of supporters in one household it helps the business. We didn’t plan to revive family gaming but I’ve heard and spoken to so many people who say, “Well, I can do something with my grandkids, and you know, we might not talk a lot but at least we’re spending time together.”

So, on to the new DSi: what’s it for?
It’s for much the same purpose as the DS Lite. This is an opportunity to put even more smiles on faces.

You’ve hardly crammed it with the latest features: two tiny little cameras, an SD card slot, but no MP3 playback
We’re not trying to sell it as a camera, it’s not meant to be a camera. There’s not much point having a eight megapixel camera with a screen that size. But the camera opens up so many other areas for games, because they are motion capable, so you can pick up movement. We might incorporate taking photos into some games, and adapting them. I’m not a developer but I think I could see some exciting things that they’ll come up with. As for music, if we allowed MP3 playback, a lot of those files may be pirated. We support AAC, which is the format used by Apple and iTunes.

The DSi has a lot of enhancements to make it easier for people to use. Because of the way the machine’s been developed, with flash memory and a memory card, you may be able to go somewhere and customise the experience. At the moment in Japan you can go to McDonald’s and download specific content. Here, you you might go to the Science Museum and have a customised guided tour. Or download content that’s specific for a particular exhibition. So, it’s not just for traditional gaming. But even then, with the gaming side, it does offer a lot too.

Weren’t you tempted to increase what it offers, especially since the arrival of things like Apple’s i-Phone and i-Pod Touch, which also have touch-screen gaming?
There are always going to be competitors in certain areas. And sometimes it can focus your attention to make sure that you do things the right way. We could have added lots of things, but then you become a jack of all trades, and a master of none. One of the things we are really honest about is that we stay faithful to our roots, of being a games company. The most important criterion is to make sure that what we’re offering can do the best games.

But one of Nintendo's strengths is that you provide games designed to play in five/ten minute bursts. Now other companies are muscling in on that very market.
Mobile phone gaming has been “going to happen” for a long time. We’re still waiting.

I gather that one of the things the DSi won’t do is read R4 cards, which are used to pirate DS games.
The DSi has a number of enhancements to built-in security. There’s firmware that we can upgrade, to try and keep one step ahead at all times. Hopefully that will protect not only our Intellectual Property but also our publishers’, who put a lot of time and investment into developing games.

Does Nintendo have its own estimate as to how much software piracy is costing it?
No, how long is a piece of string? There is no industry body trying to collate all the numbers.

Do you think video games are immune from the current recession?
I don’t think anyone’s immune. A number of our customers in retail, such as Woolworths and Zavvy, you know, we’ve lost a lot of good customers, a lot of people lost their jobs. We are probably a little bit lucky in that, you know, when times are a bit tougher people maybe think twice about going out, but it’s still something that we’re very mindful of.

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