Nintendo's Iwata On GameCube Sales, Future Plans

Thanks to 1UP for its article covering a recent interview with Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, in which he discusses "Nintendo's current state and its plans for the future in what will be a critical year for the company." Iwata seems to be confident in Nintendo's "..current target of 6 million GameCube consoles sold worldwide in the current fiscal year, which will conclude in March", and also notes that he believes the China-launched iQue "will grow into a major business in three to five years." Finally, Iwata has comments about the mysterious new Nintendo device due to launch at E3 in May, suggesting he "doesn't necessarily expect this product to be an immediate hit upon its announcement - he's prepared to see a lack of applause from some of the audience."

Comments

"games have stopped selling"?

[*weasel]

Game development is deadlocked today. Games have grown in pursuit of more beautiful graphics and more complex systems for 20 years, but that growth is no longer translating into success, and games have stopped selling. The situation won't change if we keep expanding in a conventional way. Instead, we want to offer a gameplay experience which players haven't encountered until now.

This guy must have shot out of some sort of bizzare-o world. I mean, Nintendo may be having a rough generation, but the rest of the industry seems to be just fine, and the overall numbers are still always better than last year.

And it also feels just odd to hear the implication, that innovation in games can't continue without their new hardware, from a Nintendo guy.

It comes off like a suggestion that writers can't continue to churn out new and exciting books without adding whiz-bang 'pop-up' technology.

Re:"games have stopped selling"?

[xenocide2]

The above poster must have been born out of some bizzare-o world. The publishers (Take Two) of the arguably most popular game in existance (Grand Theft Auto) are under fierce scrutiny from government men in charge of finance, for overstating earnings. Two senior and influential men in the conception of the XBox have left Redmond.

The most popular online PC games are all in the range of five years old: Halflife with its mods still leads the FPS usage charts, and as I recall, Everquest still leads the way in subscription numbers. Then look at The Sims. Four years after first publication, EA is still pumping out expansions, the one EA way. And they top the charts.

None of these games are graphical masterpieces. For the most part their continued popularity rests on human interaction. Playing with and against other people in Halflife, forming parties and "guilds" in MMORPGs, and the general gameplay of The Sims. Graphical masterpieces need so many things these days. You need an advanced rendering engine capable of per pixel lighting and shading, high resolution textures, a growing number of levels with a growing level of detail (polys). Fluid character animation, a solid fps, etc. And none of this is directly related to gameplay in general.

Nowhere in the article is it mentioned that innovation won't happen without Nintendo's stuff. Its just that there's very little reward for pursuing graphical mastery alone anymore. I expect that their new hardware will emphasize human interaction. Perhaps a wireless transmitter/reciever that finds opponents for you when you turn it on. Like those little devices in Japan that are supposed to go off if someone "compatible" with you is carrying one as well.

Not an immediate success, huh?

[Gothic_Walrus]

One of the things Nintendo is best at is coming up with extremely bizarre products...and then making them work. More than a few of their games and accessories have been innovative but not successful. Then there are the ones that take off and perform very well. A short list...

ROB The Robot - A robot you can control with your NES? Spiffy! Unfortunately, there was almost no support (two games, IIRC) and he died a quick death

Game Boy - A portable game console? GASP! Since the Game Boy is still around (now as the GBA), it's fair to say that this one succeeded

Virtual Boy - Ooh...pretty 3D graphics. It's too bad that they were just red and black, and that the VB caused massive headaches. Still, the idea was nice.

Kirby's Tilt 'n Tumble - Control Kirby by tilting your Game Boy. Definitely a unique idea, but the game wasn't exactly a hit.

e-Reader - The ability to add things to GBA games cheaply (buy a $3 pack of cards) is nice, but there hasn't been very much support. Thankfully, that appears to be changing.

That's just what came to mind at the moment. We've got to remember that most of Nintendo's biggest successes - Mario, Zelda, Pokemon - were completely unlike anything else out there at the time of their release.

I've got a feeling that this will be another one of Nintendo's gambles...a completely wild idea that might or might not succeed. We'll see in a few months...

Come to think of it, this situation reminds me of another famous company...

Nintendo: the Apple of gaming.

Re:Device?

[The_dev0]

Dude, just use the google cache for those particular pages, that's how I get around it at work :P