Nintendo Wants To Be Like iOS
In a Q&A session with investors, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata hinted at what the future of its consoles will look like. The two teams that make console and handheld hardware have been merged, thus helping the company bring a unified vision to its next generation of consoles.
Iwata noted that if the transition of software could be more simple, it will help solve the problem of game shortages at launch:
To cite a specific case, Apple is able to release smart devices with various form factors one after another because there is one way of programming adopted by all platforms. Apple has a common platform called iOS. Another example is Android. Though there are various models, Android does not face software shortages because there is one common way of programming on the Android platform that works with various models. The point is, Nintendo platforms should be like those two examples.
Could this be a hint at backward compatibility? Or perhaps a Nintendo handheld that can play nicely with the Wii, much like how the Vita and PlayStation consoles interact? Only time will tell.