Iwata sorry for Wii U’s day-one update, Zelda/Mario Wii U, collaborating with others, lots more
There are a whole bunch of quotes from Nintendo president Satoru Iwata below. You’ll find talk about Wii U’s day-one update, which Iwata regrets, Zelda and Mario for Wii U, working with third-party developers and publishers, and more.
Head past the break for the quotes. Believe me, you’ll want to read this stuff.
Iwata on not wanting to label things as a success…
“I always and strictly tell Nintendo employees never to use the term ‘success’ to describe our own performance. If we call a result of any of our efforts a ‘success’… we might apply it as the standard for success for future projects as well, and we could wind up not trying to do better than that or not making something which is very different in nature.”
Iwata on wanting to always make products that are better than what is already available…
“[Nintendo] aims to create something better than what is already available in the world. We believe this can happen by creating something unprecedented. Since Game & Watch and NES, all the Nintendo hardware has been developed consistently under this philosophy.”
Iwata on not being surprised by some of the Wii U doubters out there…
“The brand new user interfaces that Nintendo invented often faced skeptical views before a hardware launch, but wound up becoming de facto industry standards. It is challenging to communicate attractions which are hard to understand unless you actually touch and experience them yourself. This is especially so with Wii U because it has unprecedented entertainment potential.”
Iwata on not offering the same features of other consoles like achievements/trophies…
“We have not thought that offering the same features that already exist within other online communities would be the best proposal for very experienced game players.”
Iwata saying that creating Miiverse was extremely important…
“Nintendo has paid a great deal of attention to the dynamic of people playing video games together in the same room. With Wii U, we thought about expanding this concept into separate rooms which are connected online. Miiverse is a network community dedicated to video games that represents a very unique game-dedicated social graph that has never existed before.”
Iwata regretting that Wii U requires a day-one update to experience all of its features…
“Personally I think that users should be able to use all the functions of a console video game machine as soon as they open the box. So I feel very sorry for the fact that purchasers of Wii U have to experience a network update which takes such a long time, and that there are the services which were not available at the hardware’s launch.”
Iwata on Zelda and 3D Mario for Wii U…
“(one of the unique advantages of controlling both hardware and software development is that) as we develop a new hardware platform, we ask ourselves such questions as, ‘what kind of new Zelda and Mario games do the software creators hope to make on this?’ We will announce the launch schedules for new 3D Zelda and Mario games in the future, but this is not the right opportunity for me to indicate when we will make such announcements.”
Iwata on how Nintendo’s own games can’t keep the Wii U afloat…
“Our first party software alone can’t be enough to appeal to the different tastes of all game fans. The decision of Nintendo that it will publish the two software titles from Platinum Games is one answer to this challenge.”
Iwata on sketpical views toward Nintendo’s hardware…
“The majority of observers had skeptical views toward the potential of the Wii as a game machine. Exactly the same thing could be said about Nintendo DS. These are typical examples of hindsight bias where, only after noticing that these machines had sold beyond their expectations, their memories have been rewritten.”
Iwata talking about success…
“In the end, [success] all depends on what kind of wonderful entertainment opportunities a hardware platform can provide …Our efforts have just started here, and we will continue our endeavors.”
Other notes
– Iwata grateful for the third-party support thus far
– Support shows ‘no signs of waning’
– Nintendo’s teams will not stop efforts to bring Wii U owners new first and third-party content “regularly”
– Nintendo is “exploring a variety of different ways and possibilities to collaborate with third party publishers and developers.”
– Iwata: “I can confirm we are more active in this area than ever before”
