Reggie on 3DS eye warnings, Wii price cut, Sony/Microsoft motion competition, and no news on Wii successor

A portion of a USA Today interview with Reggie Fils-Aime…

USA: Talk about the alert issued saying those age 6 and under should not play the device’s 3-D games. How did that arise and what are the concerns there?

RFA: We talked about age back during E3 and we have been very consistent that young children, and we are being more specific, kids 6 and under should not view 3-D images. Why? Because at that age eyes are still developing. The way that your eyes talk to your brain is still being developed at that point. So we are putting the information out there for parents, along with parental controls, so the consumer can make the choice as to ‘Am I going to allow my child to participate in this device?’ All games can be played in 2-D and the 2-D visuals on the screen are phenomenal, substantially better than anything we have done before. So there’s a lot here for consumers.

The other piece is that many media mistakenly believe that Nintendo is just about the youth market. That is completely inaccurate. We cater to consumers from 7 to 97 (with) Brain Age, for example, and Personal Trainer: Cooking. All of these games have a wide range of different consumers. So we see no risk in making this information known and putting it out there for the consumer.

USA: A lot of analysts say it’s time to again cut the price of the Wii in 2011 to keep that steamrolling.

RFA: The way we look at our business is to continue offering great value for our consumer and continuing to maximize the business opportunity. Certainly we always look at the value equation and when we decide it is time to address that we will do it.

USA: Any thoughts on Microsoft’s and Sony’s new motion control systems?

RFA: Certainly it has been satisfying for us to see both of our competitors who had pooh-poohed motion control suddenly come into that part of the business. We always believed that getting the consumer up moving and involved with controllers that allowed for an easy interface were critical to growing the market. That’s where our competitors are now. In the end, it’s going to come down to content. Whichever of those two players who has the most content is going to maximize its opportunity.

USA: Many analysts and industry observers also speculate that it’s about time for a new console system from Nintendo. Is that in the works?

RFA: We’re not talking about that here. The day we finish a console we begin thinking about the next. But we won’t launch a new system until there is a game or an experience that we can’t do with the existing platform. For instance Nintendo DS, we just set a whole new bar for installed base for that platform yet we are about to preempt it with the launch of 3DS. Why? Because we believe 3-D gaming and 3-D photos and a whole new range of experiences were a big idea. In the end, when will we launch our new home console? When (Mario creator) Mr. (Shigeru) Miyamoto and Nintendo president) Mr. (Satoru) Iwata have a great gaming concept that we can’t execute with the existing console.