Iwata talks hardware frustration and trying to fix things with previous systems
Yet another translation has come in from 4Gamer’s interview with Nintendo president Satoru Iwata.
In this latest excerpt, Iwata discusses hardware frustration and attempting to fix things Nintendo couldn’t do on previous systems. With the Game Boy Advance SP for example, Iwata pushed for sleep functionality when the system closed. This sadly didn’t make it into the final build. However, Iwata did inform the hardware team that implementing sleep mode into Nintendo’s next system (which would end up being the DS) was a necessity.
What may be even more interesting is what Iwata said about the Wii U. Soon after the console came out, Dwango’s Nobuo Kawakami provided some feedback.
“I had a similar feeling of frustration to the GBA SP situation then,” Iwata said, as he believed that Nintendo will need to implement some of Kawakami’s suggestions in future hardware. Iwata ended by saying, “because of that frustration, not only do we want it to connect with features next time, we are actually working to fix it for next time.” Hmm…
Iwata: … By the way, speaking of usability, the Nintendo DS was the first portable game system to have a sleep function, but that feature was the result out of the frustration of not being able to implement it with the GameBoy Advance SP.
4Gamer: Frustration?Iwata: Indeed. The GBA SP was also a clam-shell design, so I pretty adamantly demanded of the hardware team that it went to sleep when it was closed. ‘This feature is absolutely essential!’ I said.
However, at that time, they told me that as it would take re-working the chip so it could be turned on and off it would take a year to do it, so I had to reluctantly withdraw my request. Nevertheless, I did tell them that they had to make sure the next system they designed would be able to go into sleep mode.4Gamer: Designing hardware seems tricky because it requires you to have a couple of years worth of foresight, doesn’t it…
Iwata: I was really upset by that at the time. But that feeling of ‘We must do it next time!’ connected directly to implementing that feature into the DS.
Kawakami: I do think the concept of a sleep mode for a game console is brilliant.
Iwata: Speaking of that, let’s talk about two years ago. Right after the Wii U launched, when you were kind enough to give us quite a lot of feedback, Mr. Kawakami, I had a similar feeling of frustration to the GBA SP situation then. On various points, I thought ‘We have to do that next time!’
Kawakami:Oh, I’m sorry. I might have been a little insensitive at the time.
Iwata: Not at all. But, because of that, because of that frustration, not only do we want it to connect with features next time, we are actually working to fix it for next time.
All: Oooooh….
