For the sake of it, my comments underneath the originals (in red):
Hmm… I guess, as a device in people's living rooms, I think I fundamentally wanted to have Wii become a more fulfilling device.
So he imagines it as a home console, and it's a home console. Fairly obvious. I'm very worried about the latter bit though, it sounds way too much like 'I wasn't having fun developing for the Wii, so I demanded more 'creative' gimmicks' to me.
Right, we did. We started from scratch many times.
So this project when through a lot of redesigns? It seems a whole lot like there might really be truth behind many of the earlier rumoured designs, they could have well all been early prototypes which got scrapped and redesigned a lot.
We had a lot of discussions and experiments, including things like where this small monitor should be.
That's interesting. Where else could you put a small screen on a game console? Was one initial plan to shove the thing on the main box itself?
On the other hand, when we were making this new controller, we heard from quite a few people who had seen what we had done with the Wii Remote, wondering why are we putting buttons and control sticks on it, and that it should be much simpler.
Wait, what the hell? And then you go around and make this... thing, with an absolute ton of buttons, touch screen, motion sensing abilities and two analogue sticks? Don't you ever think all this talk about simplifying the control scheme is absolutely ridiculous in light of the WiiU's design?
I wish the A and B Buttons would disappear", and "you don't really need the control stick".
Who were they talking to? That's pretty stupid either way, people did try a non control stick and buttons controller, it failed. They tried something like that in the Kinect too, and that didn't exactly sell at Wii levels. I've got to admit, it would have been interesting to see the reactions online to say, a Wii with no buttons on the controller. Those hardcore would have gone beserk.
Let's see. I thought that now you'll be able to see the content inside without turning on the big TV, so even if someone is watching something else on the TV set, you're able to play just with this one screen. And in Japan, Karaoke is very popular. It comes with a remote control, and on the larger screen (TV) it displays the information of the song that's currently playing, and the person who's up next is selecting the song on the screen of the remote. I think the same function exists with the new controller.
Ahh, inspiration from Japanese culture. I think this might be an issue with Nintendo sometimes, they fail to realise Japan is only a small market in the video games industry, and while the companies there sell well, many of their sales come from overseas.
Also, many games from Nintendo are a multiplayer experience, where you play in big groups. With the Nintendo 3DS and DS systems, you play by not needing to show your screen to anyone else. And with Wii games everyone plays while watching the same screen. With Wii U, you are able to combine both, the ability to display information that no one else can see, and the screen that everyone watches while playing, to come up with new ways to play. In this year's E3, we're demonstrating how that works on the show floor.
That's actually a good idea, reminds me of Four Swords Adventure and Crystal Chronicles.
Right. Five controllers. And we have people play in many combinations.
Okay, pretty cool, you can have five player mode in games now.
There are so many great ideas in sight, you're having a hard time figuring out which one you should start cooking.
Pity Nintendo tends to make the wrong choices in this a lot of the time. So instead of doing what people want and will buy, they go straight for something niche that nobody gives a damn about.
But if we made it so that people can play with Princess Peach, you have to think about how to change her gameplay with her physical proportions, and if we went with Wario people would expect a different ability from him. But we're not able to make all the player characters Toads either. That's when someone brought up how great it would be if you could use Mii characters.
So Miis are just a lazy choice to avoid having to put in different abilities. Typical, Nintendo has a good idea, then throws it away for conveniance.
With Wii U, I also wanted to alleviate those restrictions as much as possible. I may be exaggerating by saying that with Wii U, we are posing a challenge against all creators. I want to challenge them by saying, "Wouldn't your creation be better, while keeping all of its strong points with this new structure that we are offering?" and "Doesn't this hold the key that could resolve a years-long dilemma?"
One big problem here... That's not the only reason why many third party games never reach the Wii. Developers often hate competing with Nintendo on their systems. Note how the more other companies making hardware there are, the less of their games Nintendo gets? Yeah, and the Nintendo 64 and Gamecube were pretty much the most advanced, powerful, feature rich systems in their time, but it didn't help them. More importantly, what's to say Microsoft and Sony won't just rush out a new, even more powerful system copying the WiiU's features in a few months and steal away third party efforts again? This is a very dangerous road for Nintendo to go down.
With this new structure that we are now offering, we have come to recognize that we are now able to solve a number of issues that we feel have been surrounding us for years, so we really feel that this has potential. I think this is something that developers outside of the company are feeling, and developers besides you, Miyamoto-san, are thinking of as well.
So it's basically a developer focused system. They've just about said they made it to make developer jobs easier.
That in short is pretty much the biggest issue in gaming, developers often only care about themselves and their own 'fun'.
I think first and foremost it's the new possibilities of multi-person play the new controller can offer, but I'd like to point out the relationship that video games have against standard television programming. With the way it is now, I think video games very commonly are responsible for creating situations that either takes the TV away from the parents when the child wants to play video games, or the children can't play because the parents are watching a show on TV. But with the new controller, it has become clear that the two can now coexist.
I partly agree with this. On the other hand though, it basically says that it should be the games console forced to become less prioritised and not the TV. It gives a perfect reason for parents to boot kids off the WiiU and TV, as well as other console fanboys reasons to kick the Nintendo fan out the living room.
The other things is, shortly after the Wii console was released, people in the gaming media and game enthusiasts started recognizing the Wii as a casual machine aimed toward families, and placed game consoles by Microsoft and Sony in a very similar light with each other, saying these are machines aimed towards those who passionately play games. It was a categorization between games that were aimed towards core, and casual. I've been having a sense of disagreement as I personally think the definition of a core gamer is much wider, namely, someone who has a much wider range of interests, someone who enthusiastically plays many types of games that challenges different creative directions.
I agree. Then again, this whole 'hardcore vs casual' crap is just that, complete tosh. Nothing would be gone if the attitude went, and if any elitists just vanished from the community forever.
On the other hand, I certainly do not think that Wii was able to cater to every gamer's needs, so that's also something I wanted to resolve.
Answer; make a wider variety of good games, including what the different members of the public want. We've had a few good games on the Wii, but many missed opportunities.
Your thoughts?
Original:
http://e3.nintendo.com/iwataasks/
Hmm… I guess, as a device in people's living rooms, I think I fundamentally wanted to have Wii become a more fulfilling device.
So he imagines it as a home console, and it's a home console. Fairly obvious. I'm very worried about the latter bit though, it sounds way too much like 'I wasn't having fun developing for the Wii, so I demanded more 'creative' gimmicks' to me.
Right, we did. We started from scratch many times.
So this project when through a lot of redesigns? It seems a whole lot like there might really be truth behind many of the earlier rumoured designs, they could have well all been early prototypes which got scrapped and redesigned a lot.
We had a lot of discussions and experiments, including things like where this small monitor should be.
That's interesting. Where else could you put a small screen on a game console? Was one initial plan to shove the thing on the main box itself?
On the other hand, when we were making this new controller, we heard from quite a few people who had seen what we had done with the Wii Remote, wondering why are we putting buttons and control sticks on it, and that it should be much simpler.
Wait, what the hell? And then you go around and make this... thing, with an absolute ton of buttons, touch screen, motion sensing abilities and two analogue sticks? Don't you ever think all this talk about simplifying the control scheme is absolutely ridiculous in light of the WiiU's design?
I wish the A and B Buttons would disappear", and "you don't really need the control stick".
Who were they talking to? That's pretty stupid either way, people did try a non control stick and buttons controller, it failed. They tried something like that in the Kinect too, and that didn't exactly sell at Wii levels. I've got to admit, it would have been interesting to see the reactions online to say, a Wii with no buttons on the controller. Those hardcore would have gone beserk.
Let's see. I thought that now you'll be able to see the content inside without turning on the big TV, so even if someone is watching something else on the TV set, you're able to play just with this one screen. And in Japan, Karaoke is very popular. It comes with a remote control, and on the larger screen (TV) it displays the information of the song that's currently playing, and the person who's up next is selecting the song on the screen of the remote. I think the same function exists with the new controller.
Ahh, inspiration from Japanese culture. I think this might be an issue with Nintendo sometimes, they fail to realise Japan is only a small market in the video games industry, and while the companies there sell well, many of their sales come from overseas.
Also, many games from Nintendo are a multiplayer experience, where you play in big groups. With the Nintendo 3DS and DS systems, you play by not needing to show your screen to anyone else. And with Wii games everyone plays while watching the same screen. With Wii U, you are able to combine both, the ability to display information that no one else can see, and the screen that everyone watches while playing, to come up with new ways to play. In this year's E3, we're demonstrating how that works on the show floor.
That's actually a good idea, reminds me of Four Swords Adventure and Crystal Chronicles.
Right. Five controllers. And we have people play in many combinations.
Okay, pretty cool, you can have five player mode in games now.
There are so many great ideas in sight, you're having a hard time figuring out which one you should start cooking.
Pity Nintendo tends to make the wrong choices in this a lot of the time. So instead of doing what people want and will buy, they go straight for something niche that nobody gives a damn about.
But if we made it so that people can play with Princess Peach, you have to think about how to change her gameplay with her physical proportions, and if we went with Wario people would expect a different ability from him. But we're not able to make all the player characters Toads either. That's when someone brought up how great it would be if you could use Mii characters.
So Miis are just a lazy choice to avoid having to put in different abilities. Typical, Nintendo has a good idea, then throws it away for conveniance.
With Wii U, I also wanted to alleviate those restrictions as much as possible. I may be exaggerating by saying that with Wii U, we are posing a challenge against all creators. I want to challenge them by saying, "Wouldn't your creation be better, while keeping all of its strong points with this new structure that we are offering?" and "Doesn't this hold the key that could resolve a years-long dilemma?"
One big problem here... That's not the only reason why many third party games never reach the Wii. Developers often hate competing with Nintendo on their systems. Note how the more other companies making hardware there are, the less of their games Nintendo gets? Yeah, and the Nintendo 64 and Gamecube were pretty much the most advanced, powerful, feature rich systems in their time, but it didn't help them. More importantly, what's to say Microsoft and Sony won't just rush out a new, even more powerful system copying the WiiU's features in a few months and steal away third party efforts again? This is a very dangerous road for Nintendo to go down.
With this new structure that we are now offering, we have come to recognize that we are now able to solve a number of issues that we feel have been surrounding us for years, so we really feel that this has potential. I think this is something that developers outside of the company are feeling, and developers besides you, Miyamoto-san, are thinking of as well.
So it's basically a developer focused system. They've just about said they made it to make developer jobs easier.
That in short is pretty much the biggest issue in gaming, developers often only care about themselves and their own 'fun'.
I think first and foremost it's the new possibilities of multi-person play the new controller can offer, but I'd like to point out the relationship that video games have against standard television programming. With the way it is now, I think video games very commonly are responsible for creating situations that either takes the TV away from the parents when the child wants to play video games, or the children can't play because the parents are watching a show on TV. But with the new controller, it has become clear that the two can now coexist.
I partly agree with this. On the other hand though, it basically says that it should be the games console forced to become less prioritised and not the TV. It gives a perfect reason for parents to boot kids off the WiiU and TV, as well as other console fanboys reasons to kick the Nintendo fan out the living room.
The other things is, shortly after the Wii console was released, people in the gaming media and game enthusiasts started recognizing the Wii as a casual machine aimed toward families, and placed game consoles by Microsoft and Sony in a very similar light with each other, saying these are machines aimed towards those who passionately play games. It was a categorization between games that were aimed towards core, and casual. I've been having a sense of disagreement as I personally think the definition of a core gamer is much wider, namely, someone who has a much wider range of interests, someone who enthusiastically plays many types of games that challenges different creative directions.
I agree. Then again, this whole 'hardcore vs casual' crap is just that, complete tosh. Nothing would be gone if the attitude went, and if any elitists just vanished from the community forever.
On the other hand, I certainly do not think that Wii was able to cater to every gamer's needs, so that's also something I wanted to resolve.
Answer; make a wider variety of good games, including what the different members of the public want. We've had a few good games on the Wii, but many missed opportunities.
Your thoughts?
Original:
http://e3.nintendo.com/iwataasks/