TOKYO — Nintendo Co. plans to expand its share of the video game market by focusing on making better games rather than on building increasingly powerful game players, its new president said Thursday.

        The Kyoto-based game maker that brought the world Pokemon and Super Mario must take a new and distinctive approach as an entertainment company to compete with rivals Sony Corp. and Microsoft Corp., said Satoru Iwata, who took his post last week.

        “We can't be optimistic about the game market. No matter what great product you come up with, people get bored,” he said. “I feel like a chef cooking for a king who's full.”

        Sony's PlayStation 2 machine has been leading the pack with 30 million sold worldwide in the three-way game war that also includes the Nintendo GameCube and Microsoft Xbox.

        Nintendo has shipped about 4 million GameCube machines, while Microsoft is expecting to ship 3.5 million to 4 million Xbox consoles by the end of June.

        Nintendo is also planning more games that link the Game Boy Advance, the company's hit portable machine, with GameCube. It will exploit its lineup of exclusive games like Mario and Zelda, while working more with outside game developers.

        In the latest fiscal year ended in March, Nintendo posted a profit of 106 billion yen ($849 million), up 10 percent from the previous year, on a 20 percent rise in sales.

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