Nintendo has translated last week's investor meeting and some more information has emerged.

While we reported about the investor meeting last week it was based upon a third party translation, albeit a reliable one. Nintendo's own website has now translated the meeting themselves for all English-speaking fans to read.

A lot was discussed during the course of the meeting but a few key issues were raised. As reported Friday Nintendo will not ditch buttons in favour of a tablet device, contrary to rumours that the Wii's successor will be a tablet akin to Apple's iPad.

Mr. Iwata picked up an issue that he raised at the Game Developers Conference that caused a bit of a stir - social gaming and smartphones. According to Satoru Iwata Nintendo has been conducting research into gaming patterns and preferences in the USA and Japan and has so far found that there is no direct correlation between them and the use of Nintendo's consoles. "I can not say that no one said, 'I recently stopped playing Nintendo DS because I am now playing games on my smartphone,' but statistically, there was no significant difference."

On the other hand, in terms of games with a social element, we were engaged in this area long before the term "social games" was created. We have offered gameplay that increases its value by real people-to-people connections. The evolution of gameplay started from our first game system that had two controllers, which allowed two players to play together, then to Nintendo 64 with four controllers, to "Pokémon," where people were first connected with cables and then with wireless communication. Games like "Mario Kart" or "Smash Bros." are also good examples of social games because the "social" element increases the games' value. In addition, I think we can say that we take pride in the fact that "Animal Crossing" had an influence on the current so-called social games. Therefore, Nintendo will engage in this so-called social-era by proposing gameplay with social aspects which can be done under the current circumstances and which is only possible on Nintendo 3DS, Wii, or Wii's successor.

Addressing his speech at the GDC Mr. Iwata claims he feels his comments were misinterpreted and he wishes to make it clear that he was not trying to suggest that there is a conflict between quantity and quality of games. Satoru Iwata states that what he was trying to argue in his talk is that "preserving the value of video games" is important in the industry at present.

Nintendo has repeatedly been criticised for being too focused on their own games, allegedly putting third party developers in a disadvantageous position. Mr. Iwata notes that while Nintendo in the past may have been a bit focused on themselves and their own abilities they are now trying to welcome and encourage third party developers so that their consoles can grow.

Although we have already put ourselves back on track, we would like to clearly differentiate what is our true strength from what we can basically do by ourselves but can be done better by more skillful outside specialists in order not to fall into that trap again. You may be aware of some features which I am implying now in relation to the future developments of Nintendo 3DS and Wii's successor system that we announced yesterday. I am sorry I cannot say anything more specific today.

When asked about the release dates of titles such as Animal Crossing, Mario Kart and Super Mario on the 3DS Satoru Iwata suggested that fixed release dates do not exist at the moment because Nintendo are waiting to find out when third party developers are releasing their titles. They hope to harmonise their releases so that all the titles get enough recognition at retail and certain games aren't overshadowed. While he did not confirm that they will be out within this fiscal year, which ends April 2012, earlier comments by Shigeru Miyamoto seems to suggest they will be.

Last year Microsoft and Sony both released their own motion-input devices in the form of Kinect and Move. One investor asked what impact the Kinect has had on the Nitnendo Wii, both in Japan and abroad, and Mr. Iwata did not seem too concerned. While he notes that it will have had some impact he argues that as many users will have both a Xbox 360 and Wii it has not caused too much damage. He adds, "hit titles are not being released continually every month for Kinect software, so we don't believe Wii sales are being seriously affected."

Nintendo has repeatedly claimed that the earthquake and tsunami that caused considerable damage in Japan on March 11th will not have a large impact on the manufacturing and shipment of Nintendo products. Satoru Iwata reiterates this during the meeting by claiming that a lot of manufacturing is now done overseas and as such will not be affected. While Nintendo has a conservative view for the first half of the fiscal year it is due to "the current Japanese market sentiment, the situation of the launch of Nintendo 3DS, the software we can propose and the estimated length of time needed for the value of Nintendo 3DS to be understood by and spread to the consumers."

Finally Satoru Iwata returned to Nintendo's desire to work closely with third party developers so that future Nintendo consoles will feature a variety of titles suitable for all audiences. He spoke about how the company have plans to encourage development but cannot give specific details at present.

Of course, we would like to cooperate with software developers for Wii's successor, and as I am repeatedly saying, I don't believe Nintendo can carry out everything alone. I am saying that we are responsible for building up the market, but I don't think that Nintendo can maintain the market alone; We are aiming for creating a situation where software publishers will be willing to cooperate. As for commenting on such things as the performance, I already stated in the beginning that I would not mention any specific plans.

All of this information should hopefully tide us over until E3 next month when Nintendo is set to showcase not only the successor to the Wii but also a lot of new 3DS software and hopefully many other surprises.