Nintendo admits Wii online failings

The Wii was held back by its online set-up, Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata has admitted, but things will be different with Project Café.

Speaking during an investor Q&A, Iwata explained that though Nintendo traditionally relies on its own internal teams during hardware development, refusing to bring in outside help when creating the Wii's networking services was a mistake.

"In the field of networks in particular, however, I admit that we cannot do business in pace with the changes in the world and the requests from consumers only within our company and with development companies we have long been in touch with," he said.

"Wii's future could have been different if Nintendo had made better partnerships with outside companies in the field of network services at the early stages of the penetration of Wii."

Iwata went on to insist that Nintendo had learned from those mistakes, suggesting that external experts had been employed to help with the 3DS and the Wii's successor.

"Although we have already put ourselves back on track, we would like to clearly differentiate what is our true strength from what we can basically do by ourselves but can be done better by more skillful outside specialists in order not to fall into that trap again.

"You may be aware of some features which I am implying now in relation to the future developments of Nintendo 3DS and Wii's successor system that we announced yesterday. I am sorry I cannot say anything more specific today."

Nintendo's new home console, thought to be codenamed Project Café, will be unveiled at its E3 presentation, scheduled for 7th June.