Bill Gates lets his views on Nintendo's strategy be known...

Microsoft's head honcho Bill Gates has been interviewed by Mercury News at the CES, and was asked what his views were of Nintendo's strategy with Wii. In answer, he replied:

Sony has always been our most direct competitor. Nintendo of course is a competitor. But look at the resolution you get with a controlled experience like that. Say to yourself, how in terms of using a game for a long period of time, what kind of accuracy and capability do you want? Look at the classic Nintendo positioning. Look at the graphics. Look at Nintendo's execution in terms of online capability. We have this thing that nobody has ever seen before. When you say to your friend, hey let's play online, you say then you have to buy an Xbox. That's what 10 million people say. If you want to play online, get an Xbox.

We're not standing still. Look at what you saw today connecting up the world to the Windows PC. Do you expect Nintendo to rev up a team to create cross-device gaming and tool kits to develop those things? Not very likely. We clearly think that Nintendo did some things right. This group Rare that we bought a few years ago really the gestalt of doing titles of a certain type that we didn't have on our box. Viva Pinata has been a huge success. In my household, everybody plays Viva Pinata.

While several obvious examples of cross-device gaming spring to our minds straightaway (GBA to GameCube link-up, along with the Wii to DS), its interesting to see Gate's views on the situation. Leave us your thoughts via our comments box below!