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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?'"
Iwata says...
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.
And they're going to be overtaken in the handheld market by... what again? The PSP, which is an excuse for Sony and their third parties to do the exact same thing on a smaller screen?
Lack of innovation is not, as you seem to think, confined to Nintendo.
This is my sig. There are many others like it, but this one is mine.
"You're absolutely right. Nintendo had a massive installed user base and then Sony came out of seemingly nowhere and got a stranglehold on the market. I see a very similar situation here: Nintendo, currently number one with no real innovation in years, facing competition from someone with a technical edge over them. Interestingly enough, it's the same company challenging them. If you question whether or not Nintendo has innovated in the last... 15 years or so that the gambeboy has been available, just think about it: up until about a year ago there was *still* no light and you had to hold the damn thing at an awkward angle sometimes. Color took forever and they were still pushing ugly graphics on expensive media. The battle over handheld dominance will be very interesting as we know Sony has a track record for taking hold in the video game market"
Wait a minute, adding a light source to a handheld is innovative? Waiting to add color is uninnovative? What the heck? First of all, color pretty much was nonexistant in any portable device until the mid to late 1990s. And even so, color handheld games is more of a technological upgrade than an innovation. Same with the frontlight on the GB. What portable devices do you remember having an internal lighting source when the GBC came out? While I admit, Nintendo should have included a light in the GBA, at least they corrected that mistake with the GBASP, and they didn't sacrifice performance or battery life for it, the way it should be done. These things have NOTHING to do with innovation: They have to do with the technological limitations of the time. I mean, look at how the Game Gear performed with the color it had. Technologically, none of this: a game boy with color and/or a backlight/frontlight couldn't be done until six or seven years ago. Don't confuse that with lack of innovation.
Nintendo has not innovated? Wtf? Why is it that people say that? Just because Nintendo often uses the same characters in its games does not make them uninnovative. Mario Kart was innovative in that it started the kart racing subgenre. Mario Party: What games were like it beforehand? It made a board/minigame hybrid party game. How about Pikmin, a game in which you play as a guy and control an army of small plants which have special abilities and powers? Or how about Wario Ware? How in the world is THAT not innovative? Nintendo, just like everyone else, uses brand names, because people love what they are familiar with. It's human nature. Not only that, but when people see a game with Mario in it, they're pretty sure it will be high quality, because that's what mario games usually are. Brand names help inform a consumer of what to expect from a product, like that.
The Playstaion got more support than the N64 because it was, in order of most importance: Cheapter to develop for, easier to develop for, and had more storage. Now, let's look at the DS and the PSP: The DS allows developers new ways to make games, and appeals to video game developers' creative side. the DS will use a cheap semiconductor memory unit, 128 Megabytes and beyond. Now, Mario 64 was 16 Megabytes. 16 megabytes was the typical maximum for an N64 game, although there was one game that was 24 Megabytes (Ogre Battle 64), and two games that were 32 Megabytes (Pokemon Colloseum 2, and Resident Evil 2). 128 megabytes should be plenty for developers, unless they want to use a bunch of pre-renders and high poly models, which don't really matter on a handheld. The price of the DS looks to be pretty cheap, too.
And the PSP? Well, it uses 1.8 GB disks, so, again, it has the memory advantage of an optical format over a cartridge. But that's the only advantage that the PSP has over the DS that the PS had over the N64. It looks like games will have the production costs of Playstation 2 games, and higher prices disencourages innovation and risky moves by developers. That's one reason
This is why I like Nintendo over their competitors. They truly seem to want to create a better gaming experience, and get the profits from that, rather than getting the profits and then seeing what they can do about gameplay. That means they must admit their mistakes and problems, whether they be creative (like, let's say, the Virtual Boy) or business (like the Europe issue), in order to fix them and provide a better gaming experience for everybody.
I saw this in the press conferences, too. Nintendo's was focused on their games, and the future of their games. This was much nicer than an hour straight of talk about marketshares and profits and install bases. It seems like Nintendo is about "games making money" while the others are more about "making money through games," if you understand what I mean. It's to be expected, I suppose, with Nintendo being solely focused on games, but that doesn't dull my preference.