President of Sony Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida has told IGN that his company needs Nintendo to thrive for the sake of the video game industry. In order to preserve traditional gaming – via dedicated controllers with actual buttons and analog sticks – the executive suggests that Nintendo and Sony must coexist in a world where touch-based gaming by way of smartphones and tablets continues to gain popularity. Yoshida, who owns two Wii U consoles, classifies both firms as being in the same category and not as direct competitors.

Yoshida: “Well I have two Wii Us. I play Wii U games with my daughters, because they make pretty fun family friendly games.

“I think success or making mistakes depends on how you set your goal. I don’t know what was Nintendo’s goal when they launched Wii U. To me, it was a bit confusing because what they do really well was create some very safe environment for anyone, especially children to enjoy games like induct those people who have never played games ever to become gamers. And they always do very well.

“To me, what they have made with Wii U was continuing what they were doing well. But the messaging when they were saying ‘we are for core gamers’ was a bit confusing. But this year I think they slightly changed their messaging, and it seems to me like they are coming back to where they are focused.

“When you look at the situation around Nintendo that way, do you characterize Nintendo as our competition? I think in the bigger scale of things happening in the industry or tech or people’s lives, how they play games on what device, and how they start to learn to play games, I think Nintendo and us are pretty much in the same group, and we need Nintendo to be very successful to help induct as many consumers who like to play games with controllers, right?”