Former Nintendo Boss Talks GameCube, PSP

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to a GamerFeed article translating an interview with former Nintendo boss Hiroshi Yamauchi about the state of gaming. The legendary Yamauchi is customarily dismissive about Sony's attempts to get into handheld gaming with the PSP ("I don't think [Sony] understand the game business... but software for both machines will be much different, and it would be a mistake to consider them in direct competition."), and also offers a different perspective on slipping GameCube sales ("Sales of GameCube software fell short in North America and Europe last year, and I believe that's due to the popularity of violent games on other consoles. The culture of Japan is much different and less accepting of such titles. Our target market is the entire world, so it's very difficult to develop software that appeals to everyone.")

Comments

NES production to stop this year?

[PyroMosh]

Question: The Famicom (NES) recently celebrated its twentieth anniversary, your thoughts?

Yamauchi-san: Fortunately, many people have the chance to enjoy it. It became impossible to procure a fixed number of parts to continue manufacturing the console, so production will stop this year.

Huh? Are they saying that the origional 8-bit NES / Famicom is STILL IN PRODUCTION? Or at least that it was until this year? Where? And can the top-loader still be had?

Re:NES production to stop this year?

[PainKilleR-CE]

Sad how everything has to be a fad like the computer just because the newer machines can show more of Lara Croft's pixels.

Actually, the NES had to be a fad like everything else because most of us couldn't play games on our NES consoles without 10 minutes of cleaning cartridges and aligning them just right in the old front-load systems we bought 15 years ago. I've never seen an original NES system that didn't start having problems loading games after a few years, and most of us couldn't justify buying a 'new' NES console after buying 2 or 3 other consoles.

Re:NES production to stop this year?

[Gr33nNight]

Am I the only one who remembers this fondly? BTW I still have a great working NES console.

Re:NES production to stop this year?

[PainKilleR-CE]

I never had any problems with the game cartridges themselves, just with the system (and we had 2 systems in the house eventually, both of which gained the same problems after about 2 years).

I've never had any problems with CD and DVD based games, but then I treat the discs much better than I ever did a cartridge. I've never had a major problem with a top-loading cartridge-based system, either, just the old front-loading NES systems. My Atari 2600 (the old wood-panelled one) still worked just fine when I sold it about a year after getting the NES in '87 (so '88 or so, about 8 years after we got the Atari). My Genesis still works today, and the TurboGrafx-16 disappeared somewhere in my parents house.

I've heard of a lot of problems with PS2 systems as they get older, but haven't had any problems with my disc-based systems (except that Project Gotham causes my XBox to not want to shut off until I pull the plug, which seems to have nothing to do with it being a DVD-based system).

Nintendo has been associated with RPGs since...

[Rares Marian]

they got competition. Not that they're limited to that. The ploriferation of colorful scenery and characters put Nintendo in a certain stereotype.

Metroid Prime proved they could do more, but there doesn't seem to be as much focus on the intricacies of more violent games. The RPGs have depth but other games seem to be well, a little thin.

On platforms recognized as designed for 3D there's an ironic turn. Now that the 3D is so rich, games designers can use that to focus on things such as hiding from enemies or looking over another character's shoulder. Nintendo's games aren't quite as involving.

Re:Nintendo has been associated with RPGs since...

[h0mer]

I think your definition of RPG is wrong. By RPG, do you mean adventure/platform games like Mario Sunshine and Zelda: Wind Waker?

Nintendo hasn't had an excellent traditional RPG since Super Mario RPG on SNES. Paper Mario on N64 was decent I guess. One RPG in particular, Final Fantasy VII, jumpstarted the PlayStation brand. The fact that it didn't come out for N64 was the beginning of the "problem" years for Nintendo.

Furthermore, you say their other games are lacking depth. Super Smash Bros. Melee has a deep and rich fighting system that gets better as your skills get better. The new Mario Kart will add more depth to the kart formula by having 2 characters on each vehicle.

Nintendo's problems with the N64 is what has caused their so-called blandness with the GameCube. Just wait, Nintendo is making strides to regain a respectable position in the home console market. Mario 128 is supposedly a revolutionary game. If Mario 128 can do what Mario 64 originally did, and the GameCube2 has the proper marketing/games/features, Nintendo will be sitting pretty.

Misleading summary

[Westley]

The /. summary of this article is very misleading. It says:

<quote>
The legendary Yamauchi is customarily dismissive about Sony's attempts to get into handheld gaming with the PSP ("I don't think [Sony] understand the game business... but software for both machines will be much different, and it would be a mistake to consider them in direct competition."),
<quote>

Actually, Yamauchi isn't dismissive at all, and the [Sony] in the summary is incorrect. It's the *analysts* who don't understand the game business. Here's the actual interview quote:

<quote>
Sony's PSP isn't expected to hit the market until late 2004, and there's still many unknown details about it. There have been analysts who think Nintendo has a monopoly over the handheld market and Sony maybe able to break it - I don't think they understand the game business. New product competition in this industry is important. Although Nintendo's core business is software, having another hardware developer will allow us to judge the superority or inferority of our machine. But software for both machines will be much different, and it would be a mistake to consider them in direct competition.
</quote>

Now, where exactly is he dismissive of Sony? Doesn't he actually accept the possibility that the Nintendo machine will be inferior?

Please use some basic reading comprehension before coming up with summaries like this...

Domestically

[leifm]

Nintendo has a similar problem to Apple. Apple still has a stigma of being a toy computer compnay, computers for morons and people who want to color coordinate their machine with the rug. That isn't really true anymore, but still when I tell non-geeks to look at Apple as an option for a new machine they look at me like I am crazy. Nintendo has the same type of issue, a lot of people think of their software and systems as a kiddy thing, and go buy a PS2 or XBOX. I have both a GCN and a PS2, and while I probably rent more games for the PS2 (more releases) the quality of the good ones for the GCN vs the quality of the good ones on the PS2 is much higher. Even the original SNES Mario Kart is far and away more fun (and for a longer period of time) than GTA/GTAVC.

So what, I can't kill whores in Mario Sunshine? At least that game is consistently fun, and well designed. GTA is a buggy mess that only sold well because of it's violence and nonlinear design, which made it accessible to a lot of people who otherwise wouldn't play games or buy an entertainment system.

Oh really?

[BigChigger]

"I believe that's due to the popularity of violent games on other consoles. The culture of Japan is much different and less accepting of such titles"

sounds like a cop out to me. Anime is so violent they put disclaimers on it when it shows on American TV.

BC

Violence in gaming

[dracol1ch]

The following keeps comming up over and over in discussions about US vs Japanese games.

Sales of GameCube software fell short in North America and Europe last year, and I believe that's due to the popularity of violent games on other consoles. The culture of Japan is much different and less accepting of such titles.

It's a funny juxtoposition but the quick answer is always something about how violent anime is yadda, yadda. I think I finally hit the cultural nail on the head today though when I read this story. It's not the vaunted 'tolerance for violence' that everyone keeps spouting (on both sides). It's simply a cultural preconception. In Japan it's okay for cartoons to be violent but games should be cute. In the US it's okay for games to be violent but cartoons should be cute. Neither country seems (in a general sense) to be able to get over these preconceived concepts.

There is an easy solution to this.

[Inoshiro]

Get a NES game genie. The design of it was such that you never had to push the cart down, you just straight inserted it into the open face of the NES. No tricky alignment issues. I bought my game genie when they got cheap back in 1992, and I've loved it for years. I still use it today to play my NES games quickly and easily.