Miyamoto on Iwata’s involvement with Switch and HD Rumble, VR, stories in games, more
Posted on February 13, 2017 by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News, Switch
TIME is back with yet another Nintendo-centric interview. In its latest piece, the site chats with Shigeru Miyamoto about Switch (including the involvement from late president Satoru Iwata and HD rumble), virtual reality, stories in games and more.
Per usual, we’ve picked out important comments below. TIME has the full interview here.
On whether any tables were flipped during development…
Nothing really in terms of 180 degrees, but myself, Mr. Takeda and Mr. Iwata were more providing feedback during development. So a lot of the younger staff would give us presentations, and we would give them feedback and make decisions if necessary. The feedback that we did provide I think was put to good use, and I don’t think there were any times where we had major clashes of ideas. If anything, we had to think about how to make Switch unique, and there’s a certain cost associated with that. So it was like, “Oh my God, it’s going to be a lot more expensive. How are we going to deal with this?” We struggled with that together as a team.
On Satoru Iwata’s involvement…
I mentioned that Mr. Iwata, Mr. Takeda and myself provided feedback and made decisions, but ultimately Mr. Iwata was the head of development, so he put a lot of thought and time into Switch. I think that the idea of Nintendo Switch being a device you can take out and anywhere, and the idea of it being a system that really allows networking and communicating with people, I think that’s something Mr. Iwata put a lot of emphasis on.
Because Mr. Iwata was tech-savvy, a lot of our discussion involved trying to figure out how to make the technical things like network capabilities or servers or whatever fun. For example, think about when we added the ability to use a browser on the DS [Nintendo’s two-screen gaming handheld—the browser was added to North American systems in 2007]. As time goes on, all of these services become more and more advanced, and so we need to think about “How do we incorporate mobile devices or new browser features that come up?” That’s something Mr. Iwata and I discussed a lot, really trying to decide what to do and what not to do in our hardware.
On HD Rumble…
First of all, I can’t say for certain that HD Rumble is going to create something completely original, but I can say that the sensation HD Rumble provides is completely new. When we first created the Rumble Pak [released in 1997 for the Nintendo 64], at that time we were trying to just think about cost and performance. What could we make that was cost-efficient to create a rumble sensation?
Within Nintendo, there’s a group of people who just focus on researching rumble features and capabilities. For many years, they’ve been bringing different kinds of rumble and vibration features and putting them into games and testing them. What’s incredible is that it’s not just this monotone vibration, but you can feel the taps. So when you put your pen on the screen, it’s not just this dull vibration, you can feel the tap that the tip of the pen makes on the screen. Right now there’s this idea that 60 frames-per-second graphics is the standard [speed for modern video games]. If you were, for example, to make something that ran at 20 frames-per-second, someone would get mad at you.
For anything interactive, the response time is very important. So like with virtual reality, the latency makes a big difference in the experience. And with HD Rumble, the latency is different, so it provides a unique experience, and with that unique experience, I think new ideas can come about.
On virtual reality…
In terms of being together online in virtual reality, I think a lot of the problems have been solved or are starting to be solved. This is something that we’re looking into, too. But when I see people play virtual reality, it makes me worry, just as for example if a parent were to see their kid playing virtual reality, it would probably make them worry. Another issue and challenge that I think everybody faces is how to create an experience that’s both short enough while also fully fleshed out in virtual reality.
On Miyamoto’s thoughts about stories in games…
Let me start off by saying that Mr. Aonuma [Eiji Aonuma, the game’s producer] and his team, instead of creating a game where you’re playing the story, you yourself are embarking on an adventure, and I think they’ve found a unique way to strike a balance between the story and the fact that you’re on an adventure. It’s not that I don’t like story, that I’m denying the importance of story. I think after someone has played a game, it’s important that a story lingers in their mind. But what I do think is a challenge, is to cut down on playtime to set up and explain a story that’s already been set.
I think what’s important, especially for the Zelda series, is for the person to be able to think it through for themselves, and to really live the story. I think that’s the challenge we’ve been working on through the many iterations of The Legend of Zelda. And so in this game, while you’re playing, you start to kind of dig the narrative out and see the overarching story that lies in the background.
And so I think the story in Breath of the Wild still doesn’t break the balance that’s been established in previous Zelda games. But we also wanted to make a game where, after someone is done playing, their own experience in that game is what the story is, and I think we’ve been able to accomplish that with this title. And really in this game, everybody can take very, very different routes and approaches. How long it takes to beat the game has a huge range.
On A.I…
… But in the world of fun, you can do a bit more guessing and take a few more chances or shortcuts here and there, and really come up with ways to fill in some of those gaps so that it becomes a fun and intuitive and easy-to-use experience. In that sense, we have a lot of opportunities to practice right now. But A.I. is definitely something that I’m interested in. For things like robots or A.I., it’s really about how you set up the sensors, and obviously Nintendo is a company that’s really interested in different kinds of sensors.
