Nintendo's Iwata Talks European Neglect, DS Origins

Thanks to Kikizo for its transcript of an interview with Nintendo's president Satoru Iwata, also available in video form on the site. When asked, Iwata "apologise[s] to the fans of Nintendo products in Europe" over repeated delays, presumably including games such as Animal Crossing, finally out this September in Europe, mentioning "we are now putting our energies so that the European version of Metroid Prime 2: Echoes will be launched in Europe by the end of this year, at the sacrifice of the Japanese launch by the end of this year." He also discusses the origin of the Nintendo DS, "Talking specifically about the DS, [legendary 76-year old Nintendo president Hiroshi] Yamauchi specifically hit upon the idea, and proposed, 'Why not have the two screens?'"

Comments

Processing power is harmful?

[JonBob]

Iwata says...

Well I really don't believe that there will be a bright future waiting for the so-called next generation consoles that Sony and Microsoft are advocating right now. As you may know I was developing games until quite recently myself, I know how it is, and if any of these developers come to me and say, look, CPU or processing power is ten times as much as today, graphic capability is twenty times, then I will say, that means more workload and slight difference with the current system in terms of letting people understand how improved the graphics shall be.

Nintendo's laid-back approach to upcoming generations worries me. I think the problem he cites is a real one; sheer processing power is only helpful if you have something to process, which can often mean longer development time. But he proposes that instead of beefing up the processing power they should be looking at alternate user interfaces (like they did with the DS). While there can be cool innovations this way, I'd prefer to see the company attack the problem head-on by aggressively working to make better tools for the developer. Microsoft appears to be working on this, and it just may pay off for them.

Re:Processing power is harmful?

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft isn't working on easier more efficient tools, it is working on a simpler cross-platform API. So the game of the future that requires 50people to make the content can have more of a chance of recouping the expense as it will be more likely to get on more platforms. Producing the game will still be a mamoth effort.

What Iwata is getting at is that it is costing more and more money to produce games on more and more powerful hardware. Yet, the WOW factor is getting less and less. 2d->3D gives a big WOW, 1000 polys in a scene -> 10,000 gives a slightly smaller WOW, 10,000 -> 30,000 gives a tiny meow. PS3 with 100,000 a frame - who cares?

It is also becoming more and more difficult to come up with totally new titles, add that to the shocking cost of development and marketing. You would be mad to go out on a limb with something weird (i.e. viewtifulJoe - lost its publisher a ton of money).

Where can you innovate next to catch the punters imagination -> stick all your old gaming favourites on a twin screen portable with added stylus control. It's certainly different, the games aren't any harder to make and the twin-screen and stylus should prompt a few new ideas. Average punter can't fail to notice the difference, whether he likes it or not is another matter.

Re:Processing power is harmful?

[torpor]

But he proposes that instead of beefing up the processing power they should be looking at alternate user interfaces (like they did with the DS).

I see nothing wrong with this approach. The fact is, there are an awful lot of crap, boring games being written, and if you trace it back, kinetically, in the end it could be simply because of the limitations of control.

Consumers ability to control things - touchy feely things like mice and keyboards and such - has definitely been proven to be pretty oblique. On one end of the scale, you have the 8-yr old button-smasher, and on the other end you've got the 33 year old vi-using console jockey. Games have to be good for both ends of that scale, or at least hardware games systems do ...

It tends to be a little more significant than the 'raw specs' of hardware, whether or not the box you intend to mass-produce is going to work for -all- control scenario's that might be required for the truly imaginative games of the future which might be possible with these mega-GPU's ...

Again, I don't think its A vs. B, here. Sure, its great that we're getting great silicon from the Next Gen game wars, but it is also true that there is a lot left to be done on the human interface, control side of things ...