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Iwata Interviews Wii Developers

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the knights-who-say-wii dept.

Knuckles writes "On the Wii website, President of Nintendo Satoru Iwata conducts an extensive interview with the developers of the Wii. The interview comes in two volumes with three parts each. Iwata actually asks many tough questions, such as: 'In general, no engineer hates higher performance. As an engineer, didn't you experience any inner conflict when it was decided that we would not necessarily take Wii in the direction of sheer horsepower alone?' The interview is the start of a series according to the Wii website." More from the article: "Yes, it wouldn't look very natural beside a TV if it was too toy-like. And likewise, it wouldn't really be an amusing form of entertainment if it looked like some kind of AV equipment. With this in mind, we came up with 'A Design for Everyone', a concept created in order to allow as many people to use Wii as possible. Making Wii into a device that everyone likes is more important to us than a having fiercely individualistic design."

2 of 32 comments (clear)

  1. They made the inevitable car analogy! by jZnat · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Just like on Slashdot, all technological explanations can be simplified to a car analogy.
    Takeda: Of course, the issue of performance was not secondary. Anyone can realise low performance with low power. Others tend to aim for high performance with high power. With Wii however, Nintendo alone has pursued high performance with low power consumption. So, while Wii embraces cutting-edge technology and high performance, the direction it is aiming in is completely different from that of previous systems. When we look at the automobile industry, not every car is following the same evolutionary course. While some are trying to make faster cars, others are gathering public attention around the world with their hybrid engines. If automobiles can be used a metaphor, our industry has always been trying to compete over horsepower, even though not all cars are made to compete in F1 races.
    --
    'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
    1. Re:They made the inevitable car analogy! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I could be wrong, but it seems to me that Nintendo is on a much more sustainable path in terms of console development (as compared to Sony and Microsoft). When you look at previous generations, at about 3 or 4 years into it people start losing interest in what is comming out and start looking to the next generation. If, like Microsoft and Sony, your main focus is on obtaining the highest performance (and most realistic graphics) you're eventually going to hit a point where the next generation is such a small improvement over the current generation people don't regain the interest in gaming. By focusing on creating a better user interface, and modest graphics improvements, Nintendo should be able to get several more generations of hardware out before they hit an improvement plateau.

      The only consern I would have with this approach is if their graphical improvements end up being too modest, will that prevent people from buying the system? Personally, I'm not sure; I do know that several people (when it was released) commented that the XBox 360's graphics were only marginally better than the XBox's graphics.