At the heart of Yokoi’s design philosophy lay a concept he called “lateral thinking with withered technology.” Yokoi’s design philosophy can be summarized as an approach that emphasized finding novel uses for existing, inexpensive technology. His philosophy arguably runs counter to conventional game industry wisdom where newer, flashier, cutting-edge technology is (assumed) better.

I think this is still Nintendo’s philosophy. I see a lot of people complaining that the Switch is “outdated hardware” compared to PlayStation and Xbox, not understanding that they’re not trying to make the same thing.