Iwata Interviews Wii Developers

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."

Comments

They made the inevitable car analogy!

[jZnat]

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.

Re:They made the inevitable car analogy!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:They made the inevitable car analogy!

[rolfwind]

The problem is not the improvement plateau (all gaming consoles of the same generation are roughly on the same order of the magnitude with each other).

For instance, few people today make much of the graphical differences between Super Nintendo and the Genesis even though at the time it was a big deal for them.

The problem is that after a certain point with PCs/consoles, you have to pay 100% extra for an improvement of 10%-20% in performance.

In consoles, I think many people will see it as better to just go for the slighter lower system (~$250) today and in a few years, buy another next-generation system for similiar money that would blow away any of the older systems, even the high end one. In this way, they keep getting comparable improvements at $250 a pop instead of $400-$500 a pop, for a system that is almost as good, and with the $150-250, they can buy a few good games and accessories to boot.

Re:Argh! No No no no no

[Rallion]

Like most people on Slashdot, including myself, you have a massively skewed definition of 'cool.'

Mod Ashida +5 funny

[Josiah_Bradley]

Ashida: Umm, from the point of view of the designer, I would like to say that I hope you use Wii in its upright position, with the stand!
This article makes me want to buy a Wii even more now after reading about everyones hardwork.

Low-heat design requirement!

[neutralstone]

From TFA:

Takamoto: The internal fan is another case in which having a clear goal from the beginning allowed us to achieve what we wanted. Because we had the clear goal of not letting the fan spin at night, the LSI team had to minimize the heat released from the ICs (integrated circuits), and the design team had to take into consideration the heat that would be trapped inside.

Iwata: We really couldn't give up on that goal once we decided to make Wii a sleepless machine that stays on 24 hours a day. If the fan is spinning in the middle of the night, I could just imagine mothers everywhere pulling the plug right out of the wall because they thought it had been left on again. (laughs)

This is going to be an important (but perhaps seldom noticed) feature. Home theaters are beginning to sound too much like server rooms.

Re:Low-heat design requirement!

[Mac Degger]

Except, of course, that the Wii doesn't do DVD playback.

Which I don't mind; I have multiple dvd players anyway, and it makes teh Wii cheaper since they don't have to licence the dvd encryption stuff.

lower development costs & other bottlenecks

[cgenman]

Let's not forget... to get a system that can do High Definition normal mapped individual scales on every creature in the game, you may have to pay 100% more... but I can assure you to create that art asset cost a lot more than 100%+

Which means that Nintendo can launch twice as many games on the same overall budget... to find out which ones stick. Brain Training was one of Nintendo's cheapest games to make, but it has sold tens of millions of copies as well as millions of DS's.

Graphics were a bottleneck in gaming for a long time. You couldn't even get more than three sprites in a walk cycle on some of the old systems. On the PS2, you could do a full 3D walk cycle with inverse kinematics foot positioning adjusted for different skeletal systems. Graphics are about as good as they need to be at the moment, and other needs have arisen.

For one, the controller is getting bad. Sure, we've got sholder buttons (courtesy of Nintendo), a diamond face button pad (Nintendo), analog control sticks (Nintendo), and analog buttons (Sony), but the thing is so unweildy and in need of streamlining. We're interfacing with the most hyperrealistic worlds ever created using functionally the same controllers we've had since the late 70's, though with more buttons. Even then, we're talking about LOW TECH in the late 70's.

Another area ripe for development is Physics. Sure, you can skid cars now, and occasionally you can knock bottles over, but can you punch holes into walls? Does your character tip back further based on the weight of the item they're carrying? Can you aim your gun at the floor and skip a bullet off of it in Metal Gear Solid? Do we even have hair that gets close to sitting on people's shoulders, rather than hovering six inches above it?

And finally, we need more advancement in art techniques. Sure, our art pipelines have been serviced well by the support industry of middleware providers, but it still feels like we're limited artistically and by production method from really unleashing the power of the end systems. Can we work on creating art assets in-game? Texture these things under changing lighting conditions? Near other relevant textures from the game? Can we extrude a 2d concept sketch automatically into the starting basis for the 3D models in the scene?

There is a lot of work to be done. But for now, the graphics of a system aren't really the bottleneck to the next generation of power.