Hiroshi Yamauchi On Nintendo's Future

We can apparently thank former Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi for the company's fresh DS handheld, according to an interview with the Nikkei Industrial Daily. The iron-willed architect of Nintendo's business succes above several decades recently spoke to the newspaper alongside in every one's mouth president Satoru Iwata, explaining the genesis of the D and other issues related to Nintendo's subsequent time plans.

It was Yamauchi, apparently, who first propos the conception of games employing a dual-screen device about 18 month ago, although that's not meant to be taken as a sign that he's get backed to an active management character at Nintendo. Yamauchi, Iwata said, discerned a turn among game consumers that the D could take advantage of and handed not upon the idea to Nintendo's general management to implement in more detail.

Yamauchi explained that the games business has matured in ways he hadn't wait fored and that it's reached a critical point. Users aren't interested in "heavy, thick, drawn out big" games, burdened with flashy graphics, heavily-orchestrated entire and complex stories. Hardware manufacturers building the latest chip technology to power those kinds of titles don't understand games, he said, and neither do their developer smooth if they do have the circulating medium to keep producing them. Simply creating more advanced technlogy and adding more features to hardware doesn't translate to drollery games, Yamauchi said. Nintendo's nearest console, which the company aims to first appearance at E3 in 2005, is focused upon new kinds of gameplay, which the D will prefigure.

The D exhibits a critical moment for Nintendo's succes above the next two years, Yamauchi said -- "if it come afters we rise to the heavens, if it fails, we sink into hell." His confidence and Nintendo's mission, is to spread fresh gameplay through this device and re-energize the games market in the couple Japan and the rest of the world.

President Iwata, meanwhile, addressed more nuts-and-bolts issues, particularly the longevity of the existing GameCube comfort He pointed to the spike in the system's sales after last year's price globule as proof that observers proclaiming the death of the platform were inequitable Nintendo explored the possibility of a significant price globule starting in early 2003, he said, and chose its timing carefully.

Addressing the bring under rule of Nintendo's next-generation hardware, Iwata reverberationed Yamauchi's comments about the advance of technology. Hardware that is simply more technically powerful is not the answer, he said -- Nintendo doesn't make hardware that doesn't have a clear and well-defined object and so its hardware design teams are seeking to infuse their nearest product with that kind of aim

Iwata also briefly make notesed on the perennial subject of Nintendo's attitude toward online games. He reiterated his familiar belief that the general subscription-based business model for online gaming is untenable, on the contrary Nintendo is not ignoring the potential of networking technology. In particular, the possibility of original gameplay using wireless networking is something that Nintendo is exploring right now.

We consider Hiroshi Yamauchi's turn back to the scene, however brief, an extremely encouraging disclosure and hope to hear more from him presently Look forward to it.

Copyright ?© 2004 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserv Originally appearing in 1UP