E3 2010: Techland Interviews Nintendo President Satoru Iwata

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Speaking of momentum, your competitors are implementing gesture and motion control into their consoles.  Do you feel that there is no longer any separation between the Wii and the PS3 and the 360?  Where do you feel the advantage lies for the Wii?

First of all, it’s very important to note that every single Wii system available in the marketplace is a motion-control applicable system.  While on the other hand, other companies are now just trying to start selling the peripherals with motion-control technology.  And now, it’s their mission to sell the motion control system one by one to each consumer to see how each one of these consumers is going to respond to their offer.  So in terms of the sheer install base, there is a huge difference at this point in time and in the near-term.  So thinking in that fashion, we do not think that we are losing the edge in terms of the motion control arena at all.

And another thing is that we understand we became the pioneer of the motion-control experience by offering Wii Sports together with the Wii hardware. And, then, we came up Wii Fit [which also changed expectation about what motion gaming could do].  And now, we are adopting the Wii motion control technology to the new Legend of Zelda.  So, in other words, we are always trying to explore new horizons all the time—even in the field of motion-sensing experiences.

So there are two different things, the technology called motion control and there is X software which takes advantage of the motion control. The end-result is the experience, which is the most valuable thing for the consumers. And as long as we are keeping our steps forward, I think we can keep our edge.

So what are the steps forward?  Is that primarily making sure that the hardware can support software ideas?  Reggie said at GDC that Miyamoto-san says that he feels he hasn’t yet fully tapped the power of the current Wii.  Is that where the path lies, making sure that creators can do everything they want on the hardware?

First of all, Nintendo does not think in terms of the life spans of hardware should have.  [We don’t think in terms of] we are going to make this kind of software at this stage of the lifespan or what kind of software shall there be at the tail-end of the life cycle.  We are not thinking in that fashion. When we have to admit that we cannot make any great new experiences to provide the consumers with the current hardware system, that’s the time when we need to consider offering new hardware.

So looking at Wii, we believe that we still have more potential that we have not explored yet.  And in that sense, we can just kind of tell when we need to make the announcement about the next generation hardware. Just as I said about the example of the DS and 3DS, as soon as development on one hardware is completed, we start working on the next one. The successor to Wii has already been under development and review since the completion of the Wii hardware design. It’s quite another story as to exactly where or approximately when we will be able to make the next hardware announcement.

(More on Techland: The Techland Interview: Nintendo of America’s Reggie Fils-Aime)

Is that in an intuitive decision?  When do you decide, okay, now the marketplace is ready?  Like, for example, why is the marketplace right now ready for the 3DS?

In the case of Nintendo 3DS, we first have to think in terms of what remains to be done with the DS and its further potential. Sometimes we feel that things have already come to the stage where there are not many more ways that we can take advantage of the current Nintendo DS hardware configuration.  Probably sometime in the near future, [we will feel] that our applications will be more of the same and we will have to come up with some brand new proposals. So we’ve looked into different possibilities, including 3D. When we did our own experiments utilizing the 3D technology, we concluded that this is something that has potential.

I should a little bit more elaborate on that, because our approach might be a little bit different.  Typical tech-driven companies or hardware-driven companies always lay out the so-called roadmaps when it comes to making the new hardware.  So, in other words, availability of certain technologies dictates when the company is intending to make the new hardware. A typical example of that would be the PC companies.  Most of them are actually receiving technical roadmaps from Intel. And knowing when the next generation of [components] would be available, they are going to design or have already designed the next generation PC schedule.

It’s not like that at Nintendo, though?

At Nintendo, it’s very different. The poor guys in hardware development always have to ask the software developers, “Is this the year that you are likely needing new hardware?” [Laughter] And they are always working on the assumption that this year or next year, they’ll need the new hardware.  But part of that thinking is what kind of things can be done with the new components?

I imagine the engineers might be frustrated that they don’t get to play with the newest technology right away.  But essentially, what you’re saying is that you’re software-centric, and that’s the core part of Nintendo.

Right.  Of course there are some people who really love high-tech at Nintendo and I have to admit that some of them must be sometimes frustrated.  I will say, however, that everybody at Nintendo is pretty much aware that it’s not hardware nor is it software alone, but it’s the experience which matters and the experience delivered to consumers can be only realized by a perfect combination of the hardware and software.

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