With online reports of the Nintendo Wii remote strap breaking during play, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata says the public needs to be educated.
“We are investigating. Some people are getting a lot more excited than we’d expected. We need to better communicate to people how to deal with Wii as a new form of entertainment,” said Iwata at the Foreign Correspondents Club in Tokyo. “Of course before the launch of the Wii hardware Nintendo had a number of tests on the durability of everything, including the strap, but our understanding right now is that even beyond our expectations people are becoming more and more excited playing with the Wii.”
The loop that Nintendo recommends the user put around his wrist is usually blamed for most Wii remote accidents. Users with sweaty palms and swinging their arms too enthusiastically are a sure way to test the limits of the thin strap.
Shigeru Miyamoto also chimed in on the issue. “We are encouraging people to understand that you really don’t have to be so excited, but rather you need to understand the control and then you’re going to be the best player. We are looking into the situation to see if there are additional methods to encourage people to kind of calm down so they would never throw away the controller itself.”
During his speech, Iwata also suggested the Wii may break sales projections. “I’m not ruling that out entirely, but it’s premature to say it now,” he said.
