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Hiroshi Yamauchi On Nintendo's Future
Thanks to 1UP for its article covering a new interview with former Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi, as he discusses the recently announced DS portable and the state of Nintendo as a whole. In particular, the article notes: "The DS represents a critical moment for Nintendo's success over the next two years, Yamauchi said -- 'if it succeeds, we rise to the heavens, if it fails, we sink into hell.' His hope, and Nintendo's mission, is to spread new gameplay through this device and re-energize the games market in both Japan and the rest of the world." Apparently, it was the 76-year-old Yamauchi "...who first proposed the concept of games employing a dual-screen device about 18 months ago", and elsewhere, Game Science has coverage of largely enthusiastic comments from Japanese developers on the DS, ranging from the positive ("It's exciting hardware for both makers and users) to the guarded ("A machine with two screens is going to be quite a high hurdle for developers to get over.")
Does it have two sets of controls or not?
If it does, it has the smack-your-head obvious advantage of being a portable multiplayer device; with only one unit and one game, you can play with your friends.
If not....well, I'm sure that people will come up with ways to use multi-screen in a single-player fashion.
- The first time I saw it, I thought "?", then when reading the specs, that turned into "!"
Yeah.. what an idiot. Except for the part where, you know, the company was profitable for every year in the 50+ years he ran it. And since he has left Nintendo has seen their first non profitable quarter in god knows how long (possibly their entire existence?).
No shit. I wonder if he has a picture of the guy who headed the Virtual Boy's development sitting on his desk to remind him every day.
-my other sig is your mom
The gameboy is one of the things that Nintendo has done right, so I think it will be pretty hard to grab a large share in the portable market, but Sony does have a lot of money. It's almost as if portable division is a completely different company than Nintendo.
Online console gaming represents a very small fraction of the market. Nintendo isn't missing out, they're waiting to see if it takes off, and to see which billing method works best.
I don't buy that at all (though I tend not to believe Yamauchi). I saw an insightful post on slashdot a while back which suggested that this was designed to cut into PSP market share only. That, and it's not designed to replace the GBA, and it won't because it's more expensive and has a smaller library. Nintendo can still do fine off the GBA/GC whether or not the DS takes off.
A couple of people have said that Yamauchi and/or Nintendo's desicions boggle the mind - the fact is they should (and perhaps shouldn't; the man's had a history of being crazy like a fox - anyone remember him talking smack about the Sony president?). Yamauchi isn't known as Mother Brain for nothing - he is a bizarre combination of loud mouth crank and brilliant businessman. He took a hanafuda company into the player in the a high tech industry.
Though he's (thankfully) retired, I'm sure he's pulling strings behind the scens
A GREAT look into Yamauchi and Nintendo's corporate culture is David Scheff's Game Over, which has a lot of in-depth history on Nintendo as a company.
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
I think this sumarizes both sides of the argument fairly well. It doesn't look to be a profitable market area; not yet at least. Nintendo's gotten more out of the Link Cable via Pokemon.
The DS is in it's own class.
The GBA's successor (With at least a 320x240 screen) is going to compete the with PSP, not the DS.
>They fail to realize that people actually do like to play games online.
What he says is the current subscription model won't fly. With that, I have to very much agree. Games like Quake are played a hell of a lot more than any XBox online games. Not requiring to pay money monthly, hassle with connecting with a fixed service, etc is one reason why p2p instead of master/server subscription models work out better. And as it stands most cheats are blocked pretty well on PCs even without some voodoo hardware encryption scheme.
I guess if you've not already got a PC, aren't willing to hassle with installing a PC game, and aren't willing to deal with finding a "good" server, then a subscription service is right for you, but all the above seem to fit the hardcore gamer which I would think are the core audience to buy into a subscription service. And if you did have a choice, wouldn't you play as much or more on a game system if you could play online for free instead (assuming, of course, that the game you wanted was on the system)?
> They also fail to realize that people are going to buy the latest and greatest system, so the Big N can't just close their eyes to the fact that better and better hardware will sell.
They didn't say they weren't going to have the best hardware in their next console or DS. But, look at the GBA. It's job is to be a portable. That means not sucking up batteries like candy which also means not having massive processor speed. So, while the GBA doesn't have the fastest CPU, it is arguably the best portable. I'm under the impression that instead of wasting money trying to manufacturer the fastest system, Nintendo is trying to work *smart* with the hardware to maximize the fun in the game. Eye candy does not a fun game make.
Nintendo has, after all, been providing all sorts of 2D sprite hardware that make game production easier. I don't know enough about their 3D hardware to state the same, but I'd assume it's true there too. I can only begin to imagine where Nintendo will lead next, since I think the fundamental rendering for current consoles is at near peak (ie, we're into the Quake2/Quake3 rendering realm of realism). Given that, I don't thinking throwing processing power at the problem is where to begin.
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I only wish he was right. I don't know if I'm the only one, but I DETEST Internet gaming. All the online games are full of cheats and weenies and fu><0r j00 d00d morons. The servers are always full, or down, or slow, or whatever. But it's never a smooth experience. I'm constantly frustrated when trying to connect. Plus with half the online games charging a monthly service, it's simply too expensive for a casual gamer like me.
I'd like to think I could just say "pfeh, I don't play them, but they don't bother me". But it's not true. Internet games are sucking up all the developer resources. Every second game has Internet connectivity. That's wasted effort on a feature I'll never use, but I still have to pay for.
I do like LAN games. LAN parties are great. I also like party games (ie, 4 of you crowd around the same telly). But Internet gaming? No thanks. Been there. Done that. Wasn't interested in the t-shirt.
I'm quite intrigued about the possibilities for the DS. I can quite see that a couple of killer apps will come out on it, and if so I will definitely buy one.
I can see a game like Splinter Cell, where you could put a camera in a hallway and watch it on one screen, whilst performing a task on the other screen.
Or threaded roleplay games, where two sides of the story are playing out, one on each screen. You alternately play a part in each story, and watch the repurcussions of your actions on the other thread of the story.
As usual, Nintendo are actually trying to do something interesting rather just produce the 'best' console.
As a longtime N fan, I have to say, this guy's an idiot. I haven't read the article yet, I'm just saying.
Awesome! This is the first time I've seen someone get +4 Interesting for blatantly admitting that they didn't RTFA.
I have a lot of opinions about Cyborgs and Architects
You have never played a good game. Xbox live servers are always up. I dont get any lag and Im on a crappy DSL line. Admittidly there are some idiots, none of the leet speak bastards thanks to voice chat. Internet games do not suck up resources, it's very simple these days to add some reusable code modules to get/send data to/from other players. And if the dev's dont know how to do that, then they haven't been programming very long
2. Programming for the multiprocessors would actually be pretty interesting. Just because it hasn't been done doesn't mean it can't.
3. Better hardware and/or better screen does not always equal success. (Game Gear? Neo Geo Pocket Color?)
4. Even with the twin hardware, chances are it'll be priced around $200. Saying that it'll be priced at $300 is really ignorant of Nintendo's history. Nintendo has been in the gaming business for over 10 years, they're not stupid enough to have a HANDHELD be priced at anything over $200 no matter what hardware is inside.
Playstation (like all systems) in the beginning was weak. Poor graphics, lack of great 1st or 3rd party developers (name one besides from Square that made a good 1st generation PS1 game), and insanely annoying and long load times. Sony managed to sell it thanks to great marketing, the large sizes of CDs, and the innovative (at the time) use of FMVs.
The day Nintendo retires its franchises (Metroid, Mario, F-Zero, Donkey Kong, etc) is the day the gaming industry and gamers all over will greve over the loss. Considering the amount of experimentation and innovation Nintendo incorporates into their games; compared to Sony's 3rd party developers (nearly every sports, racing, FPS, and RPG game), Nintendo is a frikin think tank.
When Nintendo dismisses internet play as unworkable in the near term, what most internet nerds don't get is that Nintendo was investigating networking on their hardware before they or sony knew what a fucking console was. The Bandai Satellite offered downloadable information, and RANDnet is a fully bidirectional connection. They've tried their hands at making subscription services worthwhile, and didn't see a way to make it work, even within the population dense Japan.
If you compare the populace interested in Nintendo games against the kind of person who would like distant and anonymous online game playing, the intersection isn't really big enough. I'd rather be playing Four Swords with my buddies, sans latency, really.
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Have you even played Metroid Prime? Theres no camera at all, you play from a 1st person view. The only time you use a 2st/3rd person view is when you're in morph ball form and thats not saying much.
I don't think you even have an idea of what you're talking about if you think the Metroid series was built on its sidescrolling aspect and then state that a game with no camera is bad because 3d cameras suck.
P.S. The Metroid series wasn't built on its sidescrolling aspect. It was built on the ability to explore a seemingly endless planet at your own will. If you knew the areas in the first game well enough by memory you could get through the entire game without dying once, with one missle tank, no energy tanks, without getting the wave beam, and under 1 hour... without a mini-map available.
Actually, he said that Nintendo would be crushed if the DS failed, not that Nintendo would fall to hell. (The heaven part is correct, though, so it sounds much better in English to use a heaven/hell comparison, which is why that's how the quote is given in some translations).
I highly doubt that Nintendo is banking all of it's billions of dollars on the DS. What I'm pretty sure Yamauchi meant when he said that was that if the DS is a success, Nintendo will have finally openned up a new realm for gaming, a new dimension to be exploited for years to come. If it fails, Nintendo will be heartbroken, because it will show that innovation no longer sells: that franchise sequels with technological pizazz are the meat of the gaming industry, that all gamers will ever want are the same old, same old. If the DS fails, then innovation fails. The industry is already practically at a technological peak. If the DS can't shake things up, then the industry will become stale, flooded with Final Fantasy XXXXXs and Madden 2080s that will be the only games that sell.
I believe in Yamauchi, I believe in Nintendo. And by god, if the DS fails, then I, like Yamauchi, like Miyamoto, like Nintendo, will be heartbroken. The industry needs to be taken in a new direction: the DS needs to shake it up.