Nintendo staffer reflects on N64 Switch Online controller development and trying to avoid leaks
Takemoto Hayato, who is a part of Nintendo’s technical development department, published an interesting piece a little while back reflecting on his work with the N64 controller for Nintendo Switch Online. He spoke about his role during development and even gave a little bit of insight into leaks that occurred prior to the reveal and how they were essentially unavoidable.
Some of you may recall how there was a great deal of speculating regarding N64 games coming to Switch after a game controller application was filed with the Federal Communications Commission. Hayato called leaks “unavoidable” given how Nintendo would have needed to “perform extremely precise calendar management and careful information control” if it were to avoid “unintended situations”.
Here’s our full translation of the piece:
Taking part in the development of the Nintendo 64 controller
When a product is to be released, my job is to organize the overall plan for the hardware development project, confirm progress, and look over the operation until release. You could call my job project management. One thing that’s very important to me in this job is anticipating risks and avoiding them. Since many challenges and problems arise during development, I start off by trying to think of as many possible risks as I can, and prepare countermeasures for them. By doing that, when a problem occurs, we don’t have to hold our heads and wonder what to do, and proceed with development using the contingency we had prepared.
So far, I have been involved in a variety of product development projects such as the New Nintendo 3DS and other devices, one of which was the Nintendo 64 controller for Nintendo 64 – Nintendo Switch Online.
We had an important mission for the Nintendo 64 controller project – that was to deliver the Nintendo 64 controller to customers’ hands when Nintendo 64 – Nintendo Switch Online became available to play. Bearing the motto of “Nothing beats playing Nintendo 64 games with this”, we began development.
Delivering the product to customers by release day
One major obstacle to achieving our mission of delivering the product to customers by release day was the time it would take to get certification. For example, every country around the world has their own regulations with regards to upper limits of voltage. For some countries, we would need to obtain certification that our product adheres to their regulations in order for it to pass customs and be sold. If news of this sort gets out before Nintendo officially announces the product, we would not be able to deliver proper information to help customers understand it fully, and customers may lose out on receiving a good surprise. Therefore, we built a schedule that would not allow news of the certification process to cause such problems.
Meanwhile, as some countries have different circumstances when it comes to distribution, there may be some time between our product passing customs and getting delivered to customers’ hands. That’s why getting certification needs to be done well in advance.
For the Nintendo 64 controller that we needed to deliver on the day of Nintendo 64 – Nintendo Switch Online’s release, leaked information by obtaining certification before the official announcement date was unavoidable. We knew that we could take advantage of the fact that some information could be suppressed for a short period of time after obtaining certification. However, unless we perform extremely precise calendar management and careful information control, unintended situations can occur. Sensing the risks, I took the initiative and led efforts to coordinate different departments.
For this scheduling and information control work, we had to consider distribution on top of certification and PR, so it required working with many departments and people in various countries, and demanded ‘big-picture’ adjustments. To proceed with adjustments, I had to gather info on the publication of certification info, the official announcement day of the product and the timeframe for distribution, untangle complicated dependencies, and communicate with many staff concerned.
When asking questions and explaining things with related departments, there was one thing in particular that I kept in mind. I paid attention to the fact that everyone from different departments possess varying knowledge due to their background, so to have everyone understand me, I changed my choice of wording appropriately to get my point across. By doing this, we managed to gather necessary info, while also gaining the understanding of relevant staff. As a result, we were able to decide on a proper schedule for the project.
Once the actual release date came, and delivery of the Nintendo 64 controller began, we saw many customers happily post about receiving their controller on social media and such, and I remember being very happy to learn that. It was a tough job with the amount of difficult adjustments we had to make, but since our customers were satisfied, I felt that taking the initiative wasn’t a mistake.
Nintendo ended up confirming N64 games and the controller for Switch just a week after the FCC rumor surfaced. SEGA Genesis was added as another platform on the same day.
Translation provided by SatsumaFS and Simon Griffin on behalf of Nintendo Everything.
