Nintendo likes buttons, and isn’t going to ditch them

Most gamers will agree that physical buttons are a necessity for any kind of serious gaming, and dislike buttonless devices like the iPod Touch and iPad for the very reason that they lack tactile controls.

With all the rumours about Project Café sporting a touchscreen controller, there’s no need to worry about losing the very buttons that Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft always take care to include in their consoles. Iwata has recently gone on record declaring that he loves buttons as much as you do, so you can rest assured that the Wii’s successor is going to have them. Here’s the full quote:

Whenever we make a new game console, we’ve done it without throwing away buttons and the directional pad. The reason for that it’s better to have them, because buttons and directional pads benefit gameplay response.

Taking this into account, Nintendo isn’t planning on completely ditching buttons, nor is Nintendo thinking of taking tablets as they are today and implementing them in a game console.

Two things are pretty much confirmed there: there will be buttons and a D-pad on the Project Café controller, and there will also be a tablet or tablet-like screen involved. It almost sounds like Iwata was deliberately responding to some of the popular Project Café rumours out there.