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March 26th, 2009, 17:31 Posted By: wraggster
Before the launches of the Nintendo DS and Wii, almost no one expected them to reach their current level of mainstream acceptance, remarked Nintendo president Satoru Iwata at the GDC keynote Wednesday morning.
Now Nintendo is hearing similar misgivings from external developers. Many, says Iwata, have questioned whether their games would be able to sell on the system. Many have asked if third-parties can succeed. There is a general belief, he says, that third-parties cannot compete with Nintendo.
Iwata says they are wrong. Seventy-three titles have sold 1 million copies on the Wii. It is not a matter of Nintendo's branding or monetary funds, rather, says Iwata, it is a difference in approach.
The Nintendo president used to hold similar views himself. When he worked for HAL Laboratories, he believed Nintendo could make better games because it had more money and therefore more time to spend during the development process. Once he was inside, he realized that their success stems from a philosophy similar to the rapid prototyping found in the Experimental Gameplay Project.
In particular, it is how game designer Shigeru Miyamoto works that makes Nintendo so different. He sees game development opportunities where others don't, and leverages them for game players better than anyone else in the world today, says Iwata.
Miyamoto takes his ideas from observing how others have fun, but he never writes a design document. Instead, he assembles a small team to build a rough prototype that is very limited in scope but clearly defines what the game is about. The objective is to create fun through trial and error with the smallest number of developers possible. Only when the concept is ready for mass production does Nintendo begin to assign more developers and begin building art assets.
Sometimes this prototyping stage lasts more than two years. Sometimes they are abandoned. But this way Nintendo doesn't waste money. And if a concept doesn't work, there's nothing to prevent it from showing up in other games.
The Game Boy Advance version of Rhythm Heaven was made by a team of five people, says Iwata. The DS version was made by a team of three.
Miyamoto's other secret is "random employee kidnapping." He steals a Nintendo employee who is not involved in development and asks them to play through a game, watching where they have fun and where they become bored. Nintendo can't send a developer to every household, so Miyamoto has to make sure people can always figure out the games on their own, says Iwata.
"If it can't be enjoyed, it is not the consumer's fault," he says. "The fault belongs to us."
Gamer evangelists
"We work in a time of rapid change," he notes. Much has been made of videogaming's expanded audience. But when videogamers make purchase decisions, one rule remains the same: software sells hardware, he says.
To date the company has shipped 100 million DSes and 50 million Wiis worldwide. The videogame industry has rapidly grown in North America and Europe.
People think this industry growth is a result of the expanded audience, he says. But according to research firm NPD Group, only 20 percent of Wii-owning households held no consoles before Nintendo's motion sensing system.
Wii's success is dependent on established game players introducing the Wii to new consumers. They are the ones supporting the industry, says Iwata.
Iwata also notes that the reason why Nintendo released a Mario, Zelda, Smash Bros. and Mario Kart so early in the console's life cycle was to expand the install base, which should expand everybody's ability to sell games.
WiiWare and DSiWare
Iwata closed his talk by championing development opportunities on WiiWare and DSiWare. On WiiWare, 90 percent of all games were developed by third-parties. To help spur creativity, he showed off a few upcoming projects:
Rock & Roll Climber is a rock climbing game for WiiWare that makes use of both the motion-sensing capabilites of the remotes and the Balance Board to let gamers virtually climb rock faces.
Nintendo also showed off what it dubs "Moving Memos" for the DSi, which is best described as Hypercard for a handheld. It lets people animate pictures and then upload and share their creations through a central server.
WarioWare Snapped takes advantage of the device's on-board camera, merging addictive WarioWare mini-games with EyeToy-style gameplay. You'll be asked to rapidly shake your head to get a dog to shed water from its coat, or quickly match your face and hands up with on-screen symbols. Later, friends will be able to watch a video of your recorded actions.
Nintendo also announced its new storage solutions for the Wii. A new system update allows players to save WiiWare and Virtual Console games directly to their SD cards, as well as launch saved titles from the cards. The system update also makes the Wii compatible with high-capacity SD cards that will be capable of holding up to 240 game files apiece.
It will also add Virtual Console Arcade to its downloadable services, initially launching with four titles in North America. Both the VC Arcade and the system update are available today.
Now is the time, says Iwata, to invent things that gamers have never seen or imagined before.
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