[Nieuws] Geschreven door Johan op 2005-06-26 03:41:01

EGM interview met Reggie

Vlak na de E3 moesten we met een reddingsvest door alle, op het internet ronddartelende interviews heen zwemmen. Nu het wat rustiger is kunnen we op ons gemak een ietwat verouderd interview tussen EGM en Reggie Fills-Aime... In het laatste nummer van de Electronic Gaming Monthly zit de mannen van het Engelstalige blad aan tafel met Reggie Fils-Aime. Een man die tijdens de E3 van 2004 samen met de 'mature' Zelda en de aankondiging van de Nintendo DS de meeste indruk wist te maken op het aanwezige publiek. Zijn rake one-liner; "My name is Reggie, I'm about kicking ass, I'm about taking names... And we're about making games.", zie je nog regelmatig op internet uit de hoge hoed getoverd worden. Het is daarom ook niet verwonderlijk te noemen dat de woorden van deze man met veel interesse gelezen worden. Daarom hebben we speciaal voor jou het interview uit het laatste nummer van EGM voor jou klaar liggen, enjoy the ride. [QUOTE] EGM: Let's start off now with Revolution by getting to the online side of things. How that going to be different from what's already out there? Microsoft had it pretty well handled with Xbox Live. RFA: As we get into the Internet space, the first way we're going to get there, obviously, is with Nintendo DS, which is going to be having wireless-enabled games for this holiday season. So principles that we're applying for DS are the same principles we're going to apply for Revolution, which is, we want to make it easy and included for the consumer. We want our games to be, if you will, optimized for online play. We want it to be free, so that there are no cost barriers, but we want it to be an overall fun experience so that there's also no what I call experience barriers. By doing all that, we believe we can drive up our participation rate of online play to be well in excess of about the 15 percent you see today. And the 15 percent comes from a number of industry sources, but if you think about it, 15 out of every 100 consumers who buy an online game actually go and play it online. That's pretty small. Versus what we want to see, for example, with Mario Kart, is we want to see 80, 90, 95, near 100 percent of folks who actually enjoy the experience so much, who have access to the experience, to go do it online. That, philosophically, is quite different than what our competitors do. There's going to be no subscription fee; we're not looking at this as a profit-driven program. We're looking at it as a way to bring more enjoyment and satisfaction to the game. And we think with what we're doing on Kart, what we're going to be doing on Animal Crossing, what we're going to be doing on future Revolution wireless Internet games, we think that's a fundamentally different model than what's being done today. EGM: All right. We like free. RFA: Free is good. EGM: Right now, talking about the GameCube, it seems like there's not a whole lot—a lot of the stuff we're seeing at the show now is the stuff we saw last year. It's always been the really cool first-party titles are kind of few and far between. Is this something we'll also see for the Revolution? RFA: Well it's interesting. I would vehemently disagree with what you're saying about the range of GameCube. What I'm holding in my hands is our catalog for this year; GameCube is fully about a third of what we have coming out. In terms of first-party support, we've got Mario in four outstanding games, so it's not an overkill of Mario in terms of putting him in situations that don't make sense.... Mario Baseball is fantastic. Xbox Live has set gamers' standards high. We did a gamers day to enjoy that game; we had some folks staying on there for an hour, and hour and a half, and not even playing some of the games we had, it was so good. Dance Dance Revolution, the lines have been quite long. Mario Strikers is going to be a fantastic game. And of course, Mario Party 7—you know, it's interesting. I think potentially the core gamer might scoff at a game like Mario Party 7, but the fact is we sold over half a million units so far on Mario Party 6, and that launched in late December. So it's a game that has a tremendous following, a tremendous franchise, and then on top of that, we've got, obviously, The Legend of Zelda... So the characterization of just a handful of great GameCube games, I don't buy in to. And then if you look at licensee support, you've got Killer 7, we've got a number of titles coming from EA, a number of Ubisoft titles, you know, again, I think the characterization of low levels of licensee support is also mistaken. I've walked the floor just a little bit, and I have to say, the excitement I see for some of our GameCube games is more excitement than I see in a lot of other places on the show floor. EGM: Yeah. A lot of that is the "Nintendo factor." RFA: It's always good to see when a couple folks that are wearing PlayStation shirts are having fun on Nintendo systems out there, and there are quite a few of them. EGM: You have some good games out there, but a lot of those games are the games we saw last year. It's surprising we didn't see more surprises for GameCube and newer stuff that hadn't been announced yet. RFA: Mmm-hmm. Bryan, here's what I would say, though. If you look at where we are in the life cycle, toward the end, the people that we're going to bring in to this current gaming generation are very different than you, me...these are late adopters, these are typically younger consumers. These are consumers driven by value. So what's going to speak to that audience is fundamentally different than what's going to potentially speak to you. So from that standpoint, again, I look at our lineup, and our lineup for where we stand in this generation's life cycle, I think, is dead on. Versus, I'll give you the example—compare what you saw last year to what you're seeing this year for Nintendo DS. Right? Huge range, everything from core gamer opportunities like Metroid Prime: Hunters, to fantastic licensee titles, to things like Nintendogs and Electroplankton, things that are quite different and they're going to appeal to a whole different audience: that's range. That's something that's going to drive hardware sales; that's where we need to be for that system's life cycle right now. So while I hear the point, I do think that your audience needs to understand that for us, we need to manage the business side of things as well as the creative side of things, and right now for the business, the lineup for GameCube is quite appropriate. EGM: So you would say for Revolution, that we should expect more of those key franchises you already have to kind of drive and launch Revolution? RFA: Absolutely. And as Mr. Iwata said, so we're working on our next true Mario platformer for Revolution; we're working on our next Metroid, and we showed snippets of that work. And I'm actually meeting with Michael Kelbaugh to spend some time with him to understand the vision for our next Metroid Prime game. You'll see Zelda. You'll see Smash Bros. And Mr. Iwata certainly wants that to be a wireless Internet-enabled game because we know it would be so much fun for the core gamer. So absolutely, for Revolution you will see all of our franchises, plus, we've gone on record to say that we are aggressively working on a number of new franchises. And that is something that has been a criticism of the past, you know, "Folks, are you milking Mario and doing too many Mario-type games?" We are hard at work at new franchises and we believe that's going to be critical to the launch of Revolution. EGM: Last year you told us that you wanted another Mario that's relevant to today's teens. Is that what you're talking about, basically? RFA: Absolutely. That is the goal. Now, have I seen it yet? No. Do I know that they're working on it? Yes. But that has certainly been a key driver and a key messaging within NCL is: what is that next generation? And I think it's very important to note that what our game fans are also beginning to see is our next generation of great developers. I mean, Mr. Aonuma, having him come out on the stage, that was quite purposeful. With all of the great work he's done, he is now driving teams and creating this own vision for some of our franchises, and that's critical for our ongoing growth. EGM: And then third-party support. It definitely got better with GameCube than N64, but how are you going to keep that momentum with Revolution when we haven't really seen the controller but we know it's going to be...it's going to make our head explode? Say, a popular franchise like Splinter Cell, which kind of requires a conventional controller. How are you going to make third parties support a system with such an innovative setup and controller? RFA: The thing that I always find surprising, and certainly in the last year I've had wonderful opportunities to spend quality time with a number of our key third-party publishers, is when you sit down and share the innovation with them, just how excited they get. I saw it firsthand with DS; we're seeing it now with Revolution. The fact that you and your fans haven't seen the controller doesn't mean that no one else has. I mean, again, and Mr. Iwata did this during his presentation on Tuesday—if you just think about it, we're going to have the ability through wireless internet to download all of your great games from NES, SNES, N64. Think about it: Each of those controllers were different. How are you gonna play? That captured some the imagination of what our controller needs to be able to do, and certainly as you get into the meat of that type of innovation with the developers, their eyes truly light up because they start to imagine what's possible with that type of configuration, which is vastly different than a sheer horsepower type of game. EGM: And then speaking of innovation, we know that's what Nintendo stands for. At the same time, DS games like WarioWare DS, are kind of a throwback... RFA: Best-selling game to date. You know? What I can tell you is, first: that WarioWare Touched has done extremely well for DS. And while WarioWare has always been kind of a core fan's game, with this generation, we really started bringing that to the masses. And I think that what we have done for the WarioWare franchise is truly exciting. And now we have set up WarioWare Twisted for Game Boy to be a major success. The next success you're going to see for DS is going to be Kirby. And again, it's a game that potentially the core fan might look at and say, "Gosh, what is this all about?" But that game is fun; I've played a demo. I took it home on the weekend and I have to say I got hardly any work done because I was playing it all weekend long. It is a fun interactive game. The next one after that is going to be Nintendogs, and it is going to blow the roof off. The response we've had from our retailer partners, the response we've had from licensees when we've shown it has been off the hook. And what that signifies is that yes, innovation will drive this business. Metroid Prime: Hunters is going to be a great core gamers' game. Plus all of the third-party product that's coming out: James Bond, et cetera. So we are huge, huge believers in innovation, that innovation will drive our platforms, and you've truly just seen the tip of the iceberg for Nintendo DS. EGM: Compared to the other two console makers, you guys are different in approach. Do you ever think sometimes your approach is too different in terms of alienating some people? Do you ever feel your approach sometimes does alienate some of the third parties? RFA: You know, I can't speak to historically what we've done. What I can tell you is that I truly have spent a lot of quality time with senior folks at at least the top five Western publishers. And what I hear from them is that they value, appreciate, love the innovation that we bring to the market. Frankly, what they ask is how can we share even earlier the innovation that we're working on so that they have an earlier jump on understanding it, buying in to it, and bringing fantastic product out to the marketplace. We did a good job with Nintendo DS. We can always do a better job. We're working very hard to take that type of communication and buy in to an even higher level with Revolution. And we believe by doing that, you will see fantastic innovation, and frankly, a huge level of support by third party developers. EGM: You haven't mentioned price or release yet, but the Revolution will be less expensive than the other guys'? RFA: Do you know how much the other guys' are going to be? EGM: We just have a guess at the moment, various analysts' guesses and so forth. We're assuming that PS3 will be 300 to 400 dollars. Consistently, you guys have come in at a lower price point. RFA: The difficulty in that question is, first you need to put a stake in the ground as to what the competitors are going to do. If you purely look at the specifications, you have to peg both systems at more than 300 bucks. Minimum. And Sony's system probably more up to 400 bucks. Now that assumes that they approach the business rationally and at least look to break even on hardware. Which isn't necessarily a good assumption, but you would assume that. Again, Nintendo's taking the approach of, first, a gaming-centric console system yet we will have the capability because of that speed card and other types of memory to have movies and other types of content, but that's not the overall objective. We are center of the plate gaming. I have to assume that from a pricing standpoint, we will be substantially lower than the competition, because we don't have all of that added fluff that a gamer, frankly, doesn't—it's not core to gaming. Now, we'll see what happens when their pricing is announced and when ours is, but just as a rational businessperson, it leads you down that path. EGM: How do you feel, then, if a gamer wants the fluff of say, PS3, if that means you will be the second machine that they buy, possibly the third machine? RFA: The interesting thing, and I like to believe that outside of my role as a Nintendo executive that I'm a pretty rational consumer, especially in the electronic space. I own an iPod, I believe that for a music library that is by far the best device. There are better, smarter devices out there that can connect my iPod to an amplifier to play music on my home stereo, than to go buy a $500 machine that does a whole bunch of other things that I don't need. So, I mean, I think fundamentally, that's the piece that the consumer, frankly, is going to vote with their dollar as to what makes sense. What I can tell you is the other time that Sony tried this strategy, it failed miserably. And it's called the PSX. So I think that the consumer will vote with their dollar when everything comes out and everything is known. We do believe a center-of-the-plate gaming strategy is going to make sense in this marketplace. Especially when it's supported with fantastic software. You haven't even asked me a question about Micro, you haven't asked me about DS. EGM: We think it's a great device, but instead of purchasing a DS, why would someone buy this right now? Obviously, if you look at the lineup, software wise, it's mostly for DS right now. So while this might look like a slick machine, is that really where a gamer would want to spend their money right now? RFA: We said all along that we're going to have a three-part strategy. There's going to be a console strategy, there's going to be a Game Boy strategy, and there's going to be a DS strategy. Right? We said that: three different legs to our proposition. And this continues the Game Boy leg. It is sleeker, it is more image, it is more fashionable than the current GBA SP, and the SP is a great device—we sold 28 million of them here in the United States. But what we've learned is there are certainly different levels of portability, right? There's portability that you can pop into a bag, which is currently SP, which is currently DS, and then there's portability that you put in your pocket. And for today's consumer, whether they're sitting on a bus, whether they're waiting for some buddies to show up...there's five minutes of downtime that you say to yourself, "What am I going to do? Am I going to get on the phone, am I going to pick up my Game Boy Micro and play a quick game?" And so we think that's where the opportunity is. We think it's that, call it 11-15 year old consumer. They may have an SP at home; they have a number of SPs at home, but this is going to be something that they pop in their pocket, and when they're hanging out with their buds or when they're in between classes at school or when they're on the bus, it's five minutes of pure fun. And we think that that is a huge proposition, and again, I have to tell you: The retailers have been all over it. You know, they know their consumers about as well as we do, and the belief is that it's going to be the hot Christmas item this year. Especially when we announce the pricing. EGM: So you're not worried about people moving away from DS? RFA: No. And the reason for that is that DS is going to be driven by Kart. It's going to be driven by Metroid Prime: Hunters. It's going to be driven by Nintendogs. Maybe some new colors. Maybe some other pieces of innovation that we do. We're going to continue to drive activity on that piece of our business as well. We will have initiatives for Cube, led by Zelda; we're going to have initiatives for SP; we're going to have initiatives for DS; and that's our plan. [/QUOTE]