Satoru Iwata, who served as Nintendo's president from 2002 to 2015, notably didn't do many interviews outside of Nintendo's own press releases. However, nearly 10 years after his death, a previously unpublished interview with him has resurfaced. Yesterday, Adam Doree ( Disclaimer: Doree is an employee of IGN parent company Ziff Davis) uploaded a 29-minute interview with Satoru Iwata from 2004.
Originally done for the now-defunct games media site Kikizo during E3 that year, the interview has now been remastered and translated into English with subtitles. At the time, Satoru Iwata had just taken over as Nintendo's president two years prior, and the company had revealed the DS a few months earlier. Iwata discusses the company's current generation of consoles in the interview, explaining its selection of DS demos for the show and the handheld's status as a competitor for Sony's PSP.
While the Wii wasn't formally revealed until two years later, Iwata teases it as an exciting predecessor for the GameCube, saying, "Just as Nintendo surprised people with the DS, if we were to create new hardware after the GameCube, I believe there's no point in making it unless it's something that will surprise people." He also discusses working with former president Hiroshi Yamauchi and representative director Shigeru Miyamoto. "Hiroshi Yamauchi has led Nintendo for over 50 years, and in the past 20 years, he is someone who can be called the father of today's gaming industry," he said.
Iwata sadly p.