Miyamoto "Very Sad" During GameCube Era
Nintendo's creative leader discusses the tough times that led to the DS.
By Kevin Gifford, 03/11/2009
Even the senior managing director of Nintendo feels down now and again -- and as any dyed-in-the-wool Nintendo fan can tell you, there were more than a few things to feel down about during the company's GameCube era. That's why it's perhaps little surprise that in an interview conducted with Famitsu editor-in-chief Katsuaki Kato this week, Shigeru Miyamoto revealed his "sadness" at Nintendo's game-development atmosphere at the time.
"There was an era when Nintendo was going in the direction of doing the same things other companies did," Miyamoto told Kato. "The more we competed with new companies entering the market, the more we started acting similar to them. But is being number one in that competition the same as being number one with the general public? That's the question we had. Entertainment is something that you have to look at the world with a very wide eye as you create it. I always thought that, but there were a few years where I was unable to get off other people's trends. It was a dilemma in my mind."
Which years were these? "The N64 and the era after it," Miyamoto responds. "I was endlessly fascinated with 3D worlds, but what with all the issues I had to tinker with in terms of rendering and processing speed, it got to the point where I didn't know who was making the games any longer.
"This is a job where you have a plan and you polish it endlessly while getting help from others. If Nintendo's games fail to stand out as games that aren't made that way proliferate, then it shows that the creation process is for nothing, which made me very sad. That was especially obvious during the GameCube era; Nintendo titles were hardly even discussed by the [non-gaming] general public back then."
As Miyamoto describes it, this creative dead end that he and his development teams felt with the GameCube was one of the primary motivations for Nintendo's new approach -- something first seen with the Game Boy Advance's Classic NES series. "We thought about starting over from scratch and aiming for games that can be played by people who don't play games," he notes. "We did some research, and the result was the Classic NES series, which got the response we were hoping for. In the end we didn't want a new game system, but a product that would make the entire world go crazy. And so [ex-Nintendo president Hiroshi] Yamauchi said 'two screens.' That turned the development lab upside down!"
The core concept of the DS was a pretty far-out idea even by Nintendo standards. "Doing that would make the system larger and essentially double the price," Miyamoto said. "And yet we thought that it'd be a new surprise for the general public, that it wouldn't be a bad way to attract the interest of a wide band of people. So we went through some trial-and-error work which ultimately connected to the touch pen, something I had wanted to have for a while. I didn't think two screens was enough to make the DS a success, but the touch pen is what puts it all together, both in terms of cost and design. That's what helps make it seem fascinating to people."
And to think: we wouldn't have the successful, powerful Nintendo of today if it weren't for the era of "connectivity" and little purple boxes.
source: http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3173211
