I missed a chunk, but here's the jist of it.
On my business card I am a president. in my mind I am a game developer, but in my heart I am a gamer. Today I’d like to speak about my heart, the jobs and this industry. The first game I ever played was Pong and I loved it. I was the first person in my class to buy a Hewlett Packard pocket calculator. Where most people use their calculators for higher maths, I used mine to programme video games. My first game was a baseball game, no-one can say it had bad graphics – it had no graphics at all!
When I saw people playing my game and having fun, I felt proud. This is a source of energy and passion for me. As that passion began to blossom I think my life course was set.
In ‘78 I entered the Tokyo Institute of technology. No-one was teaching videogame programming then. After class I took off on my motorcycle for one particular retail store in Tokyo. This was the first store to have a computer department.
There were others there looking at the computers like me, all of us thinking: how can I play games on them? We became friends and rented a apartment together. We began designing our own games. We worked till midnight together every night. That became HAL. From the movie, 2001 space odyssey. We thought this name was very very cool. Like all game creators I was extremely cool too (pic of nerdy himself as teen, audience laughs). So I don’t really remember how but I kept it up and graduated. But I did. When it came time to take a job I had the distinction of joining the smallest company of any graduate in my class: I became the fifth employee of HAL. My father was not happy, as you can imagine.
People sometimes asked me what I did when I was hired at HAL. I was a programmer. And an engineer. And a designer. And I marketed our games. I also ordered a lot of takeout food. It was all great fun! Perhaps the biggest moment in the history of HAL came when we heard the rumour that Nintendo was developing a machine capable of developing incredible graphics. The famicom. The NES. We knew that this machine was for us. We knew that this was for us. We had to get a meeting with Nintendo. Yes, Nintendo did hire us, but not to amaze the world with one of our projects. Instead they told us to fix one of their products, a game behind schedule. So we repaired a game. Eventually released as NES Pinball. That experience taught us that even artists must know the business side of game development. After all if a game never comes to market there is very little chance of it making any money.
Working in those days with limited graphics .. one day, our games won’t look any better. What will we do then? Our work was satisfactory enough that we formed a close association with Nintendo. We learned other lessons. Our first Kirby game taught us the value of teamwork. Since not everyone can be a Miyamoto, we discovered that teams can build on each other to make something superior to what one person could make.
Today I would like to answer two questions that I am often asked. What’s changed and what has stayed the same?
Unchanged: our entertainment. We must create an emotional response to succeed. Happy, sad, elated, excited. A pride of accomplishment in the player. Triggering feelings from our players is the true judgement of our work, the bottom line measurement of our success.
Challenge and reward. How much work an frustration a player is willing to withstand. Core gamers have huge appetite for challenge. Casual, less so. It is our responsibility to make game for all skill levels, and this include people who are not playing our games now.
The third thing – the importance of the idea! Software sells hardware. This truth never changes. People buy game systems to play the games they love. Software is a user experience, as Steve Jobs said, software is driving technology of all consumer electronics, not just computers. Finally what has not changed is the value of intellectual property. Franchises sell software. While our industry has made hit games with names like Spider-man and James Bond, we should be proud that our best games are those which we invented ourselves, the heroes and worlds that we invented ourselves.
Other side of the coin: what has changed?
Bigger! So much is bigger. Especially here in the west, the business is bigger. The US and Euro markets alone are worth 17bn dollars. Games sales up 8% again on last year. Games are everywhere. Young men now spend more times playing games than watching TV. We could have told them that a long time ago! Of course the games themselves are more complex. More digital space. Bigger technically. Bigger budgets, teams, challenges in meeting deadlines. Big game companies are getting bigger by consuming smaller ones. Only the biggest companies can afford 8-figure development costs.
Big attention. But we may not be compatible with other entertainment. Books TV and videos are the same for every user. But our games allow users to write their own stories and their own endings.
On the other hand, what’s more prominent in my thinking is how our industry is getting smaller! Smaller risk that we’re willing to accept. Smaller in how we define games: the list of genres seems fixed. Shooters, puzzles and so on. When is the last time we invented a new genre?
(Sing it - alice)
Even in the genres we have reduced the environments we use. The bosses, the heroes, the tracks, are starting to look more and more alike. Variety is becoming harder and harder to find. We are getting smaller in how we define progress. Making games look more photorealistic is not the only means of improving the game experience. (applause). I know on this point I risk being misunderstood. I am a man who programmed a baseball game with no players. If anyone appreciates graphics, it’s me! But this is just one way of improving. Improvement has more than one definition.
Finally .. What is a gamer? As we spend more time and money chasing exactly the same players, who are we leaving behind? Are we creating games just for each other? Do you have family or friends who don’t play? Why don’t they? How often have you challenged yourself to create a game that you might not play? These questions form an important challenge for all of us. So I have preached more than enough about this state of our industry. You may be wondering how does Nintendo plan to respond?
First. Has Nintendo turned its back on the hardcore gamer? No. Metroid Prime Hunters on DS proves this. Geist too, which is a new look at shooters. And if we were not interested in core gamers, Gamecube would not be the home of Resident Evil 4. We care about core gamers. And core gamers care about Nintendo. Otherwise we would not be finishing the most anticipated game.. A brand new Legend of Zelda!
I wonder .. I would love to tell you all about it, but actions speak louder than words. You will see the new footage now.
(It’s dark! Looks like everquest…alice)
A new look is only one part of that story. More of the mystery will be revealed at E3.
This adventure will appeal to core and new gamers. It meets the standards we set for all software development, the four is:
- Is it innovative?
- Is it intuitive?
- Is it inviting? Do you want to spend time there?
- Does the interface measure up? Can the player connect in new ways?
At Nintendo, this is how we measure ourselves. This applies also to our hardware example: Nintendo DS. New forms of interface, to be both intuitive and inviting. So far people have decided it does all of that. As of today we have shipped 4m system to Japan and America. DS goes on sale in Europe tomorrow.
You are familiar with the voice input functionality, and the two screens. Perhaps less so about the wireless capability. Let me tell you about it. We are now finishing a game – mariocart – that will allow 8 players to compete simultaneously.
These days I spend so much of my time travelling and doing meetings, I forget how much fun you have playing games, I like that! Mariokart will come to market later this year. I’d like to spend the rest of my time on where does Nintendo go from here. In the universe of interactive entertainment there is a planet called videogames, it’s the one we know best, but it is only one. Also in our universe there are other planets that entertain in different ways to current games. It is this part we are anxious to explore. On one hand we work every day to make what we describe as videogames better: we want to give players what they want, but at the same time we are intent on finding out what else we can use to entertain.
Our second goal is to show players something new, something they may not even know they want. A good example of this: Pokemon. A wonderful RPG but also much more. Players collect and trade Pokemon like you once traded baseball cards. Pokemon expanded RPGs to places they hadn’t gone before. Another example: Pictochat in the DS. Not a game. Not a competition. But a way for us to better understand how communicating wirelessly might also entertain.
Pictochat represent the latest step in something much larger for Nintendo. I want to announce today that following long term and groundbreaking work in connecting players, we will aggressively pursue wi-fi connections. The original Gameboy connected players on cable - we put four control ports on consoles, then made controls wireless. This is all part of our unifying philosophy that continues with DS – every aspect is designed to be friendly for all audiences. Wi-fi should be easy for everyone too. We want to make this process simple and seamless. Users shouldn’t have to think. There’s no SSID or wep key. We remove the most important consumer barrier because Nintendo’s wi-fi connection will be free.
As I said, simple and seamless. So you may want to know.. Is this infrastructure ready to go? Almost. By e3 you won’t be asking where are the dev kits. I can say today that you will be playing wi-fi games on DS this year. We are developing internally and externally with a number of people, and at least one of these projects will be groundbreaking. Let me give you one example. Animal crossing wi-fi. We chose this for or a few reasons. It’s a non-game game.. A form of entertainment that doesn’t really have a winner or conclusion. Its restrained pace avoids wi-fi latency issues.
We feel our form of free and easy wireless play moves the industry in new direction. We make similar moves in software too. Here we demonstrate a few things that form different parts of that interactive universe. They may seem unusual because they are very different!
Demos of Nintendogs and Elecktroplankton.
Electroplankton is an interactive musical composition experience. It’s not really a game. It allows me to make music. Entirely new interface. I place dots, and they make noises. This game is different : it’s designed to produce harmony, not adrenaline. Some people are hypnotised, they refuse to turn the game off! You can agree that this is not from the world we currently call videogames.
So this is Nintendo’s plan. Make our existing gameworld better. Better Zeldas, Marios, better partnerships. But also exploring other worlds in interactive entertainment. This is passion, this is a mission and an adventure. And most importantly we want you – the creative heart – to take that journey with us. You may remember from E3 last year that we explained that DS had two meanings: dual screen and developer system.
Revolution’s core processor is called Broadway because of it’s the capital of live entertainment. The graphics is called Hollywood because it’s the capital of movie entertainment. (Partners are IBM and ATI - alice) Now a few specifics. I can announce today that Revolution will be backward compatible. The best of the Nintendo Gamecube library will still be enjoyed by players years from now. Second: we intended to incorporate wi-fi in all we do. Therefore Revolution will be wi-fi enabled built in. Third. Even though the game experience enjoyed by players will be far different on Revolution, developing for it will be familiar. No steep learning curve. It’s a place where the best idea, not the biggest budget, will win.
And make no mistake, we expect 3rd party publishers will be fully supportive of what we’re doing. From this point forward we will be expanding our development reach. Some larger internal teams, some game partnerships with 3rd parties, and maybe someday we’ll work on a game together.. I’d like that! If you don’t mind, I will finish today with memories from one more franchise from my career – Super Smash Brothers. At the time it was being developed, I was working fulltime for Nintendo. My heart told me I was a developer, so I reassigned myself to HAL to finish the game. Once again I was living on pizza and rice balls and working through the night. From their office it’s possible to see Mount Fuji, and people say it’s most impressive at dawn. But during this period, we would see the sun shining on the mountain before we ever went to bed. Many say the sight of the first light on Mount Fuji inspires them, but for me I hope I never see it again!
I also remember the first version of Smash Bros developed for n64. The concept was to take the characters and have them ... as you say here inAmerica, beat the heck out of each other. This idea was not new, and there were a lot of fighting games. The characters looked the same as they always had. So the concept did not sound hip or cool or revolutionary. So there were people inside and outside Nintendo who did not strongly favour our idea. This was the environment that our team worked under. This attitude remained until testers came to the moment of truth – playing it. This is what happened. People smiled, then laughed, then began shouting to each other. That was the moment everything changed. This was also the proudest in my development career. Yes. The Smash Bros series have become a great worldwide success.. over 10m copies worldwide. But the memory of that first moment when the testers played stays with me always. That is that moment that I call success. We at HAL found a way to bring our idea to life, our team believed deeply in the concept, and we didn’t waver in our approach. We had.. just like everyone one of you, even though we come from different sides and speak different language, and even if we have different taste and food, we are all identical in the most important way. Each one of us has the heart of a gamer.