Yamauchi chased cutting edge hardware at times like the SGI N64 chip, Iwata didn't, Furukawa could again have his own ideas.
Yamauchi chased innovation and uniqueness as a way to assure healthy profits and constant relevance through time.
When he trasformed the company from a small playing card maker for the local market to a global leader in the interactive entertainment he made sure to foster this trait as a integral part of Nintendo's DNA.
Excerpt from the President's message 1998:
Some may also be misguided when they state that the future belongs to those with the greatest financial might. They assume success will be mandated by those who can create the greatest number of new products; or underwrite the boldest marketing; or secure the broadest distribution, or the most popular entertainment licenses. Although financial strength is necessary to compete, it's no guarantee of success.
In the year just ended, we witnessed the expansion of so-called "next generation" video game systems into millions of new homes around the world. Indeed, these machines will surpass the sales of any preceding era of technology, and their near-term success is assured even when we have not yet realized even half of the eventual retail sales for these "next generation" products.
But in fact, the biggest success of our industry in the year just passed is an appropriate lens to help see the future and is occurring on a technology that's now more than 10 years old – Game Boy. This simple hand-held, portable system became home to a new game concept, Pokémon, which already has sold through more than 8 million games in the Japan market alone. To sell at such a rate, and to reinvigorate the Game Boy platform in the process, there must be something vital at its core. And there is. It's called innovation.
Pokémon created innovation in an important way. Not by the look of the graphics or the license of an entertainment star, but by altering the experience the player has with the game machine. The innovation of Pokémon lies in its ability to combine four different attractions into a single new game experience: training, trading, collecting and adding. These dynamics individually have existed in other products. But by combining them into one new video game experience, Pokémon not only created a new mass market for these games, but also expanded that market to toys, television, trading cards, stuffed animals and audio CDs. It innovated.
Our ongoing goal:
to innovate for the purpose
of creating new game
play experiences.
To alter interactivity.
And in many cases, these innovations can create
great impact in the market without requiring new
technologies. For example, our new Game Boy Color system, while still a Game Boy at its heart, uses a new, color screen, faster processor and expanded memory. Players will get to experience more innovative games, and still enjoy the nearly 1,000 games in the existing library.
- Hiroshi Yamauchi
What Furukawa stated in interviews is that he (the current management) will follow Yamauchi's desire for uniqueness however, if in the past Nintendo was mostly interested in withered technologies, he open up to the possibility to achieve uniqueness through cutting edge tech (and accordingly is investing in R&D).