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Miyamoto on PS3, Industry
The Guardian Gamesblog has a talk up with Shigeru Miyamoto, where they get into his views on the PS3 delay, and the industry as a whole. From the article: "Any announcement about PS3 will affect Nintendo. But we don't see it as a competition between the two consoles, although the customers always do. It depends on what expectations people have of the PS3 and Revolution. Sony has taken a long time to create their machine but it is obvious that the direction we (Nintendo) are taking is different to the PS3."
His views on the PS3 were basically covered in the quote.
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Nintendo is trying for a much different audience. Not the college kids getting together for Halo/Ghost Recon/Counterstrike matches, not the 80hours/week MMORPG addicts, not the fans who buy consoles just for sports games.
Nintendo is going for the casual "family" audience. Nintendo is going for what made the original NES great. I hope they can pull it off. Nintendo right now is competing with themselves, not MS or Sony.
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I love Nintendo, but it seems like Miyamoto's sitting there, looking at the cup of hemlock. Just like Socrates. Both are/were in high spirits and thought their course of action was for the best. Hopefully Nintendo avoids this fate.
On further reflection, it's not quite that good of an analogy, as Socrates was ordered to drink his...
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It's not clear that it happened for them. In retrospect it looks like the DS has thrived because it was trying to do something a little different, unlike the competition -- but did it really crack that older demographic?
Personally I am the family market, with two 12-year-olds. I'm also the older market: I'm 38, and I've bought my share of games, though none for myself in the last year-plus.
The Revolution is where my money will go, no question, for the simple reason that it's going to be far less expensive to buy for my kids, it has a tiny sense of innocence to it which I think you kind of fricking want in a game, and it's going to be actually interesting to see new titles because of the funky controller.
So they got me in both senses. Even if I was just buying for myself, what would make me want a PS3 or XBox? The incremental changes in hardware specs are dullsville. Shaq sweats on screen, but the game mechanics still don't let him rebound with any realism at all. At that price, too, for my limited taste in games now, no way. (That's leaving alone the cost of real HD, which I'm not going to be picking up in the next year or two.)
Both MS and Sony have vastly overshot me, as a market. Nintendo hasn't, and they're trying to rediscover the fun in the whole thing. They win my cash.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
So Miyamoto-san thinks there will be gamers for both the PS3 AND the Revolution? Their approach to video games are different? Wow! Who'da'thunkit?
:)
Slow news day, eh?
I have no interest in either the cost or the catalogs for either the 360 or the prospective PS3. The Revolution interests me both for my kids and for myself, and is far easier on the pocketbook to contemplate.
The other two consoles are positing the existence of a much, much wider hardcore gamers' market than exists, and pricing themselves out of a significant share of that.
Nintendo is also, astonishingly, the only player that's projecting any sense of fricking fun with its products. It's amazing.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Seems to me that Miyamoto's view that the PS3 and Rev are non-competitors is shared by his audience - and that if he does feel that way then answering questions about the PS3 seems out of his realm of concern. Makes me wonder why, given the opportunity to talk shop with the Uber-mancer at Nintendo Guardian chose to base the brunt of their discussion on PS3. Are they trying to hype that near-dead horse into a fine paste? Or is it (as my title suggests) just nonsequitous sensationalism?
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A developer interview normally goes something like this. Turn up, chat to PR (if available, otherwise receptionist) meet head dev guy, chat about game and marvel at high level of caffeine-inspired dedication on display. But having an interview delayed because the developer is having his photo taken with the preceding journalist? Nah, never happened. Until yesterday that is, but then Shigeru Miyamoto isn't your average game creator. His mightily impressive CV - Mario, Zelda, Pikmin (hey, I liked it) - means he is revered by gamers of a certain age who grew up playing his seminal titles. My only other meeting with him was about five years ago on a roundtable discussion in Japan. The abiding memory is of a swarm of US journalists getting their copies of Ocarina of Time signed. Again, not something that normally happens in an interview. The interview was supposed to be part of the general Animal Crossing promotional push, but Miyamoto was happy to chat about far wider issues. Lovely.
Do you feel that Nintendo has been late in getting involved in online gaming?
I've been involved in looking at online gaming for a while now. We are responsible to the shareholders in the company so everything we do has to make sense financially. Until recently we have felt that we couldn't make money out of online gaming. It has been very difficult for online games to become an authentic business in this industry.
But there has to be an interesting aspect to online gaming to make it worthwhile. I am a game designer myself and what I want to do is make a variety of new games. If we have an online game I would have to spend all my time looking after one game. There are a lot of hurdles to be crossed to run an online game but we have fixed some of these, such as ease of connection and security. Now that the Nintendo wi-fi service has done so well we are ready to develop it further.
How important is it to widen the market behind gaming's core audience?
We need to widen the appeal of gaming to include more of the general public as it is hard to sustain the current audience. There is a big line separating gamers and non-gamers. We are trying to create games that excite everyone. From the hardware side we want to create an easy interface so people can say, "this I can touch". We designed the DS with this concept in mind. When we advertise the DS we never call it an advanced version of the Game Boy Advance but rather a new entertainment gadget. Our mission right now is to find subjects that will appeal to general people and create a new market.
(at this point, Miyamoto asks me what I had for dinner two nights ago. Thrown? You betcha.)
This question is how we advertise Brain Training in Japan and has helped us appeal to more people. Our research on Nintendogs has shown that many players are females in their 20s. What we are seeing is a lot of different people who never used to play games are playing on the Nintendo DS. Unfortunately we are running short of DS to sell!
Was redesign of the DS a belated recognition that how a product looks is as important as what it does? Can you explain the thinking behind the redesign?
The main aim was to make it much more portable. This is the upgraded and more gorgeous version of the DS. We have made it lighter and the screen is adjustable and brighter. Portability was the most important factor.
How different is it creating games now compared to when you started out?
When we started our mission was to create some new entertainment within the limited machinery available. Game and Watch is a good example, with a LCD screen. All you could think about were the tiny dots. Which ones can be displayed, which ones erased. So within those limitations we had to think about how we could entertain people. Today our ability to express ourselves is much bigger and wider. There are so many different functionalities we can chose from now and we can express ourselves easier. But how we are going to express ourselves is going to be more and more important to make the differenc
Why [spend $400 on a console] when you can build a decent gaming PC for $600?
Because on the PC, you typically need a cluster in order to handle four simultaneous players (combination of one or more of you, your kids, their play dates). Such a cluster costs $2400 and needs an extra monitor for each player. A console, on the other hand, costs only $200 to $400 and can use the same monitor that you already use for your DVD player. It would be different if you could plug four gamepads into a machine and have PC games actually recognize them, but most commercial PC games tend to restrict themselves to one player per machine. Not all four-player games are split-screen; many, such as * Party or Bomberman, use a shared view instead of a split screen.
you can get joysticks if you want
What good will buying four joysticks do if the game will only let me use one at a time per PC?
and you can play a huge array of games
Which does include independent games, granted, but notably does not include any games similar to Smash Bros. or Katamari.
seriously, console manufacturers design with long term cost cuts in mind these days. Sony and MS will hit the hardcore up for whatever they can and then gradually drop the price, subsidising losses with software and accessory sales.
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Personally both the 360 and PS3 hold no interest to me whatsoever, and I've been playing games since the heady days of Monkey Island and FF VI. Both of them have very strong corporate agendas behind them, and they don't include gaming (remember, the thing you buy a GAMES console for?)
Microsoft wants to push Windows and their own online services into the living room, and they're not exactly responsible in the way they approach business. Sony on the other hand wants to push Blu-ray, not to mention having a recent history of treating customers like criminals which doesn't bode well for the DRM side of things.
Not to say that Nintendo didn't have its share of monopoly leveraging going on in the late 80's when they were convicted of anti-competitive behaviour, but they've since been brought down by market forces and appear to have gained a new focus. Kinda like the IBM of today.
Maybe every company needs to be brought down every once in a while when they get too big and turn too greedy in order for them to remember why people liked their products in the first place.
So in short, it's the Revolution for me. It's likely to be cheap, doesn't come with DRM bundled, takes an innovative approach to the controller (we hope) and it's built for gaming, period. The alternative is more of the same along with questionable agendas which may, or may not be, in my best interest.
Actually, I don't think so. I would guess that most casual gamers will find the Revolution to be an attractive proposition: Interesting console, acceptable price and fun games for the whole family. Hardcore gamers, on the other hand, don't need to be convinced to buy more than one console. If the Revolution turns out to have a few great games (Metroid Prime Revolution?), they will buy it.
And then the Neo Geo was spawned, where we all found out that there is indeed an upper limit to what the "average gamer" is willing to pay.
You know, this is an attitude that ticks me off that is being championed. "Ganers" do not have unlimited wallets or the desire to have those wallets vacuumed. Yes, I am willing to pay more for hardware or software that is substantially different or more advanced. No, I am not willing to pay more for something that is extremely similar but has a "gamer" label slapped on it. Sound cards and system cases are not inherently better because of a blue LED and the word "Gamer" in the title.
Just put out a quality product, compete in the market, and gamers will notice and buy your stuff. Promise.
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