GDC 2007: Shigeru Miyamoto Keynote
What did Nintendo's master designer reveal about the company's Wii console? Click here to find out.
by
Matt Casamassina
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March 8, 2007 - Nintendo's legendary game designer and director, Shigeru Miyamoto, returned to the Game Developers Conference to deliver a Wii and DS focused keynote on Thursday. Of course, all of IGN's Nintendo monkeys were on hand for the event, which kicked off close to 11:00 a.m. and ran for about an hour. Prior to the anticipated speech, which took place at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, hordes of Nintendo fans waited in lines that ran around the block for the chance to Miyamoto up close.
The conference opened with giant screens displaying the Mii character creation menu and it became immediately clear that the character being built was, in fact, a virtual version of Miyamoto. Within a few moments, virtual Miyamoto, spelled Miiyamoto, was placed into the Mii Plaza and the master designer took the stage at GDC to applause.
"I am amazed that it has been eight years since we had the chance to talk and it seems that you haven't aged a bit -- just like me," Miyamoto joked.
Miyamoto used the Wii's Photo Channel to do his GDC presentation, showing various photographs -- everything from his garden and dog to snapshots of games that he had worked on over the years -- in traditional slideshow fashion.
He said that over the years the videogame battlefield has changed and showcased pictures of Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, as well as himself, young and wearing a necktie. "Guys in neckties were playing videogames back then," he joked and continued to outline the progression of the industry. In 1998, Miyamoto continued, games like Goldeneye 007 and Ocarina of Time were the best-sellers -- both a far cry from the early days of software.
Something changed in 2004, though, according to Miyamoto. More and more games were perceived as having a negative affect on players. "So even as sales went up, our reputation as an industry went down," he added. It was during this time that the master game designer found himself at a crossroads. He wondered, "Would my style of games still be accepted by future users?"
It was this thinking that eventually led to both the DS and Wii, as Miyamoto wanted to create games that could be appreciated by all types of gamers.
The Nintendo legend spoke about the Nintendo Difference, an often-used term that describes the company's corporate vision. He said it was comprised of three important elements, including reaching out to the expanded audience, keeping an internal balance for its developers and taking risks.
Miyamoto referenced his wife -- for years a non-gamer -- as his primary means to test the waters of the casual player. If she liked an idea or game, he figured that most casuals would, he said. He referred to this rudimentary gauge as his Wife-o-meter and said that over the years his wife's interest in games has risen, going from a mild attraction with Tetris to nearly hardcore levels with Wii and told a story about coming home from work one night to find his wife playing the console; she had, to his amazement, downloaded the Everybody Votes Channel and was in the process of voting.
Miyamoto trumpeted the importance of tenacity and used the Talent Maker series, whose roots go back 20 years, as an example. The designer used the Wii Photo Channel to illustrate the various iterations of the software through the decades and pointed out that it ultimately became the Mii Channel. At the same time, he said that developers also need to prioritize and implied not every battle could be won.
Miyamoto said that a new Mii-related Channel was in the works in which people could compare and rank the most popular Miis in circulation. Afterward, the Nintendo leader brought up Mario 128 -- a GameCube demo that has come to epitomize next-generation Mario. He said that game journalists continue to ask him what happened to the project and he is never certain how to reply because it was more of a technology demo than anything else. He then admitted that the tech that was Mario 128 eventually became Pikmin, but that the spirit of next-generation Mario lives on in Super Mario Galaxy. It was at this point that Miyamoto revealed spectacular new footage of Galaxy in motion, which can be downloaded from our site.
DKDetectiveElementary, Dear Robin (he/him)
