Satoru Iwata - Heart of a Gamer

please welcome to the stage director of the Game Developers Conference Jamil Medina [Music] good morning many of you will have a lot in common with our next speaker as he started out as a game developer himself if you've played any of the Kirby earthbound or Smash Brothers games you've already met his inner self yet his vision of the future propelled him up the chain of command landing him at the highest level of the video game industry we are also particularly appreciative that he will be will be delivering his keynote in English and with a sore throat please join me in welcoming the top man at Nintendo worldwide president Satoru Iwata [Music] thank you very much Jamil on my business card I am a corporate president in my mind I am a game developer but in my heart I am a gamer [Applause] today I'd like to speak to you from my heart about our jobs and about our industry I remember the first video game I ever played it was pong and I loved it by the time I was in high school I was the first person in my class to buy an Ari hewlett-packard pocket calculator I think I was one of the original party adapters but where most people use the calculators for higher mathematics I used mine to program video games my first creation was a baseball game I don't think anyone can say it has bad graphics because it has no graphics gameplay was represented by only by numbers but when I saw my friends playing the game and having fun it made me feel proud to me this was a source of energy and passion but that passion for games began to blossom I think my life course was set in 1978 I entered the Tokyo Institute of Technology I would have loved to study video game programming but no one was teaching it them so I went to classes on engineering and early computer science but after class when my friends went back to their rooms to study I took off on my motorcycle for one retail store in Tokyo this was the first store to have the department entirely dedicated to personal computers that was my hangout and I was not alone there were others there who also looked at those early computers and so the same thing I did how could we play games on them we became from friends form the club and soon rented an apartment in the Akihabara district of Tokyo where we began designing our own games we walked until midnight or later every night and that group of friends is what became the company known today as hell the name came from the computer in the movie 2001 Space Odyssey how we thought that name was very cool also this is what I looked like back there thank you like all game creators I was extremely cool too don't you think so I don't really remember how but I managed to keep up with my classwork and graduated from the Institute but when it came time to take a job I have the distinction of joining the smallest company any grads of any graduate in my class I left to become only the fifth full-time employee of how and when I told my father this you can imagine it was not the happiest moment in the history of my family people sometimes ask me what I did when I was hired at all well the answer is that I was a programmer and an engineer and a designer and I marketed our games I also ordered a lot of takeout food and I helped clean up and it was all great fun perhaps the biggest moment in the history of how came when we had rumor that Nintendo has developing a machine capable of incredible new graphics the Famicom or any years as it was called here in the States we knew that this machine was for us so we used every contact to we could to get a meeting with Nintendo sure that one of our idea would became an instant hit yes intended it hires but not to amaze the world with one of our projects instead they told us to fix one of their project again that had seriously fallen behind schedule instead of creating again we repaired again and it eventually was released as NES pinball that experience taught us that even artists must know the business side of game development after all if a game never comes to market there is very little chance of it making any money working in those days was also instructive in another way he called the graphics were so primitive by today's standards we asked ourselves how we could spur the players imaginations as a substitute for what we couldn't display on the screen think about this some day our games won't look any better what we do there well our work but satisfactory enough that we formed a close association with Nintendo and as how invented a couple of early franchises we also learn other lessons our first copy game taught us the value of teamwork since not everyone can be a Miyamoto we discovered that idea can come from several team members building on each other to make something superior to what one person could invent then we worked with the famous Japanese creator she gets at all Italy who was already an avid gamer himself to develop his first idea for game the app series called mother in Japan and released here in America as earthbound proved to us that ideas take on a special appeal when they become interactive many years and many projects later I went to work for Nintendo fruit on and then one day about three years ago mr. hamachi appointed me to succeed him as company president of course this was a great honor but it was also a great challenge I knew this would require committing much more time and assume assuming much more responsibility but fortunately came developers are familiar with such things so I'd like to move on this morning and answer to a question that I've often asked now that I've had two decades of experience in the video game world excuse me first over the last 20 years as a developer what things have changed and second what things have stayed the same one thing that has not changed and will not change is our nature our as a form of entertainment like any other entertainment medium we must create an emotional response in order to succeed laughter fear joy anger affection surprise and most of all pride of accomplishment in the end triggering these feelings from our players is a true judgment of our work this is the bottom line measurement of success secondary we must always weigh challenge and reward how much work and frustration a player is willing to withstand depends on the personality and skill of the player core gamers have a huge appetite for challenge casual gamers want less difficulty at Nintendo we believe it is our responsibility to make games for all skill levels and most definitely that includes people who are not playing our games now the third thing that has not changed is the importance of the idea of course it is variable to device an extension or offshoot of a current idea but it is invariable to come up with a brand new idea of what a game can be I'm sure there are few of you out there in the audience today with such creativity and our industry new fourth this truth never changes software sells hardware people buy game systems to pay the game they love I agree with Steve Jobs the head of Apple when he said software is a user experience software is driving technology not just of computers but of all consumer electronics finally what has not changed is the value of intellectual property if it is true that software sells hardware it is more true than ever that franchises sell software while our industry has made hit games with names like spider-man and James Bond and NFL football I think we should be proud that our best games are those whose hero our worlds we invented ourselves [Applause] thank you so then on the other side of the coin what do I think of when I consider what has changed one word immediately comes to mind bigger especially here in the Western Hemisphere the business is bigger the North American and European retail markets alone are now worse approximately 17 billion dollars in the u.s. game sales were up another 8 percent last year there are games in your living room you are office on your PDA your cell phone and of course best of all onion Nintendo Diaz many in the media are shocked to learn that young men now spend more time playing game than watching TV I think those of us in this room could have told them that a long time ago of course the games themselves have become much bigger in several ways they are bigger in a technical sense occupying more digital space that in turn requires bigger teams bigger budgets and bigger challenges in meeting deadlines this also means that big game companies are getting bigger by consuming smaller ones we know that in the next generation budgets for triple a console games we are regularly moving to eight digits and that before any marketing money is spent only the biggest companies can afford such cost not surprisingly the success of our industry and the profit margin for hit games has again drawn big interest from larger entertainment companies but we may not be compatible there are books movies and TV shows are exactly the same for every user but our games let players help write their own screenplays and their own endings now I don't think any of this is news bigger budget bigger stuffs bigger companies it there for all of us to see big is obvious on the other hand what's more prominent in my thinking these days is how our industry is getting smaller we are smaller in the amount of risk we are willing to accept we are also smaller in how we define video games the list of generals seems fixed shooters sports platform puzzles and so long when is the last time we invented a new genre but as importantly even within these generals we have reduced the environment we use the racing tracks the soundtracks the bosses the heroes are starting to looking more and more alike consider Tigers golf and Mario Golf each a successful franchise but using two different looks for the same general such variety is becoming harder and harder to find we are even getting smaller in how we define progress making games look more photorealistic is not the only means of improving the game experience [Applause] I know on this point I risk being misunderstood so remember I am a man who once programmed a baseball game with no baseball players if anyone appreciate graphics it's me but my point is that this is just one pass to improve games we need to find other improvement has more than one definition and finally I am most concerned with what we think as a gamer as we spend more time and money chasing exactly the same players who are leaving behind are we creating games just for each other do you have friends and family members who do not play video games well why don't they and I would ask this how often have you challenged yourself to create a game that you might not play I think this question form an important challenge for all of us excuse me so I have preached more than enough about the state of our industry you may be wondering how does a Nintendo plan to respond let me answer a couple of things in a straightforward way first has Nintendo turned its back on the hardcore gamer I don't believe so if we are not interested in core gamers we would not have packed in Metroid Prime hunters for each of you when you went out and bought your Nintendo DS this is not just excellent game Xperia entertainment but also a signal that we want the ds2 v4 core gamer tooth we have not had partnered with in space in order to take a new look at shooters in the game guys which is coming exclusively to Nintendo GameCube I eat eat it will move your emotions and move your definition of this jump and if we are not interested in our gamers GameCube would not be the home to the first big hit of 2005 here in America captain's Resident Evil 4 it's a sign that not only do we care about core gamers but who are gamers care about Nintendo and most of all we will not be finishing the most anticipated game in your industry this year a brand new Legend of Zelda [Applause] I wonder love I I would love to tell you all about it but actions speak louder than words we have chosen you to see the first new footage of Delta since e3 10 miles ago so take a look [Music] [Music] Oh [Applause] [Applause] a new look is only one part of the Delta Tori much more of the mystery will be revealed at e3 this latest zelda adventure will appeal to core gamers and all gamers just like every previous version the reason I believe is that it means the standards we set for all software we develop we call these standards the four eyes first is it truly innovative something different from what has come before second is it intuitive does control of the game and the direction of gameplay seem natural third is it inviting do you want to spend time in this world and finally how does it measure up in terms of interface can the player connect in new ways certainly few games can score perfectly in each of these areas but at Nintendo this is how we measure ourselves and why we apply these standards to our software projects there is also an obvious hardware example in Tendo Diaz it was designed to demonstrate both innovation and new forms of interface to be both intuitive and inviting so far people seems to have decided that it does all of that as of today we have shipped four million gear systems to Japan and North America in just 16 weeks since launch and those numbers do not include Europe where Nintendo DS began selling tomorrow I know that you are all familiar with the northern aspect of des gameplay in cooperating to the two screens the touchscreen and the microphone what you may not have much knowledge of yet is Wireless gameplay we are now finishing up again Mario Kart that will allow eight players to compete simultaneously yes gamers already know that Mario Kart is fun but does the DS version make it even more fun well let's find out let me ask you this if there anyone out there who is celebrating a birthday today if so please stand up okay please come up here to the stage we have anybody celebrating a birthday today [Applause] and in fact this way sir if you have helped see this gentleman in the blue shirt here in fact if your birthday is any day this week please stand up we got readies anymore anything is over you to come up here and join me come on don't be sad [Applause] bill built Wingham from Nintendo of America is also going to join us and we need to form a piste group for wireless Mario Kart on Nintendo DS let's so go ahead and spread out a little bit on stage so that if you guys aren't too happy with the results of the race you don't get in too big of a fight here okay on the screen above us you see we will build cob I hope training mine right bill okay now if you've ever played a mario kart game then you've got a pretty good idea of what you're going to be doing here if you haven't for some strange and unexplainable reason I'll give you the control schemes you'll use the a button for your accelerator you'll steer with the plus control pad if for whatever reason you decide you need to step on the brakes which I don't know of anyone who ever does that Mario Kart but that's the B button when you go into a curve you can use the r button to hop into your power slide and once you pick up an item you can use the L button to use the item okay that's that and remember mr. e wada is on your standard corporate suit here the guy used to use the program games he certainly knows how to play them so don't pull any punches he's not fun to lose to now see I'm off to a good start here already except for the fact I just miss my item and that I can't seem to get off the grass mr. wada which character are you hi Mario you're Mario okay everybody get Mario no I have been trying to beat him all week and I've had no success um use the a button this button it's to go fast steer with the plus control pad all Paul Yaffe sure now you can see on my screen I've got a close-up map of my character so I can see what's going on in my immediate vicinity when I pay attention of that I can see if there's a red shell coming my way or I can press the X button to get a full screen view to see just how far behind I am from mr. e wanna take that Beach now if you're really good at the power slide you can power your way through the turns here kind of like I'm doing and now we've got just over one lap to go I think I'm ready to make my move oh yeah there we go yeah I'll hold it I'm very bad I'm finally gonna beat my nerve ah this is great [Music] ouch Oh who was that oh and all I gets a banana [Music] okay well somehow I don't think I'm gonna pull this out y'all second place isn't too bad I'm gonna do some listen thank you very much everybody give it thank you very much for joining us you thank you unfortunately we're not gonna be giving these to you today so if you can go ahead and leave your ds's and your Game Boy Advance or your your Mario Kart games with our friend in the blue shirt here that would be great yeah these days I spend so much of my time on meetings and interviews and traveling I sometimes forget how much fun have playing games I like that well this demonstration no virus Mario Cart brings us up to the present moment this is a product that we we will bring to the market later this year but I'd like to spend the rest of my time today on what is perhaps the next logical question where does Nintendo go from here let me try to explain it first with an image in the universe of interactive entertainment there is a planet we call videogames it is the one we know best but it is only one also in our universe our other planets which entertain but in different ways from current games it is this part of the universe we are anxious to explore so this idea creates the dual passions of Nintendo on one hand we work every day to make what we describe as videogame better we want to give players what they want but at the same time we are intent on finding out what else we can use to entertain our second goal is to show players something new something they may not even know they want you already are familiar is a good example of this philosophy it's Pokemon at its core Pokemon is a wonderful role-playing game but it is also much more players collect and trade pokémon may be the same way you once collected and traded bottle caps or baseball cards pokemon expanded RPGs to two places they hadn't gone before another example was our decision to put piktochart into the Dia's it's not again not a competition but a way for us to better understand how communicating wirelessly might also entertain and extra chat as a virus function also represents just the latest step in something much larger for Nintendo excuse me I want to announce today that following the groundbreaking work we have always always done in connecting players we will aggressively pursue Wi-Fi connections beginning with Nintendo DS the original Gameboy connected to players with a cable then for players on Gameboy Advance we put four controller ports on your consoles and then made our controllers wires pitch pokemon firered and leafgreen we packaged wireless adapters with the games that interest introduced unfamiliar players over fairly large distances this is all part of unifying unifying philosophy that continues with Nintendo DS every aspect of Nintendo DS is designed to be friendly to all audiences therefore Wi-Fi should be easy for everyone to our goal is to make this process simple and seamless users shouldn't give a salt Wi-Fi connection you feel like a local area network connections because they will use a common API we will let DS owners enjoy a Wi-Fi result the difficulty of entering an SSID or web key and maybe most importantly we will remove the most important consumer barrier because Nintendo's Wi-Fi connection he'll be free as I said thank you as I said simple and seamless so you may want to know is this infrastructure ready to go almost whatever development where are the dev kit by e3 you won't be asking that question well then what about the entertainment I can say today that you will be playing Wi-Fi games on the years this year what we are developing internally and externally with a number of people is very exciting to at least one of these projects I believe will be groundbreaking and we look forward to your Wi-Fi games too let me give you one example of what we are working on internally we are developing Animal Crossing Wi-Fi we chose this property for a couple of reasons first it is one of those non game games I mentioned a form of entertainment that really doesn't have a winner who are even a real conclusion and because of its unrestrained pace of action it avoids virus latency issues before you could take Animal Crossing to a different village now with Wi-Fi you can take it around the world so we feel that our form of free and easy virus play helps move our industry in a new direction but we are making similar moves in software as well I want again to bring built in and out to demonstrate to other things that come from a different part of the Intel interactive entertainment universe but even before we show them I can tell you they may seem unusual pick they are something different this first one is the current fashion of mr. Miyamoto and Bill himself [Applause] I'm sure by this point many of you probably heard the name Nintendogs before some of you probably seen screenshots of it and maybe even a few of you have seen the video we showed it a three last year or possibly even played it here on the show floor at the GDC what you haven't seen is the full version and what I'm going to try to show to you today is some of the unique microphone capabilities that we've implemented in this game that I think is going to get you very excited if my dog here chopper is a good boy now obviously I've got one dog here in my house and I can pet him with the touchscreen and I can play with him and he is a very cute puppy he is unfortunately very excited right now but what we can do is I can go and I can grab some items I can play with him in the house got a little tennis ball here that I can throw around for him he'll chase it he'll play with it and maybe I can even get him to bring it back to me which is all well and good but so far this doesn't really show off anything so let's see if I can get him to really respond to me chopper [Applause] now the best thing about the use of the microphone and in 10 dogs is that this is not a standard set of terminology that you have to respond to you that you have to memorize and you work with the dog on you create your own terms you train this dog with the words you want to train it with so if you want to tell the dog to sit to make the dog sit you can be that if you want to tell the dog to get down to make them sit it can be that or if you just want to say boogey man it can be that you teach the dog the terms you want so let's see if I can get chopper to respond to some of the terms that I've taught him chopper ok ok chopper sit boy sit boy now unfortunately I have two dogs in real life and they don't listen to a thing I say either so I'm really not I'm just not a very good dog trainer I think and chopper I think maybe a little bit hungry so let me see what is I can come in here and check he is a little bit hungry so let me see if I can feed him some food and then get him to listen to me there we go now the game is going to feature over a dozen of the most popular breeds of dogs in the United States and each breed is going to have traits characteristic to that breed so you'll have dogs that are very good at being trained with voice commands you'll have dogs they'll be very good at agility competitions and you'll have dogs that will be very good at things like frisbee competitions or flying discs I should say chopper yeah sit boy sit boy now in this case some of the other features that the game does have is that you can also you can wash your dog you can take give them a little bath you can also take them for walks around town we'll give them a little quick bath right here which is a lot of fun [Music] she doesn't like me yanking his tail and then you just grab the shower handle and you wash them off okay come on let's get you clean your buddy there we go [Music] and there we go there we go now he's nice and sparkly clean good you can also enjoy taking your dog for a walk around town where like all dogs he will mark his territory and leave little packages behind for people which would be best if you could pick those up along the way chopper good dog chopper lie down lie down good dog now what do I do here is click there unfortunately I've been teaching chopper a little too many commands this morning and you doesn't want to learn anymore but what you would do is you would click right there tell your command into the microphone and then the game would repeat your command and the dog would understand it so again you could teach him to play dad jump or in the case of chopper you might want to teach him to SiC balls and with that we're going to move on to the next game [Applause] and now mr. Miyamoto is very busy to finishing up this game in Japan as you see this product will expand our audience to players who currently are not satisfied with what we've being offering them I'm also going to ask Bill to show you one other software project we are calling electro plankton that sounds different electro plankton and it looks different too the idea here is that creativity should not just belong to the developer but to the player as well the electro plankton is a game that really can only be described as an interactive musical composition experience which sounds kind of long but I don't really know what else to call it what it is is a software program like mystery water says it's not really a game it's an experience and it's one that allows someone like me who has absolutely no musical capabilities whatsoever to do something that a lot of you probably do and that's create music and when you see me doing here is I'm just touching the screen and by doing so I'm placing electro Plankton's on the screen and depending on where they're located they're making different noises and so I've based on this I can compose the music compose a song [Music] if I happen to a place one in a spot I don't like I can simply grab it slide it somewhere else and change the note that it makes graduate in this mode is the electro blank ins get larger you'll notice that the sounds they're making become slightly more symphonic and so as you're creating music the music that you're creating is interactive and changing it's really a fascinating experience but there's actually a lot more modes than just this one so I'm going to show you one I'm actually going to show you two more but this next one also takes advantage of the microphone although it looks kind of strange so we have a nice drumbeat going on here and you've got four fish swimming across the screen which probably looks kind of strange and doesn't make a lot of sense which is what we first thought when we got the game in the office until we started experimenting with it let me tell you what it does I'm just going to tap on any fish cool put it put the boo-boo-boo electro plankton [Applause] yeah Nintendo who's your daddy now I know I'm not a great rapper but I'm no worse than vanilla ice so and then the next mode then I'm going to show you I think a lot of you are getting a lot of fun out of and this is a little remix of the Super Mario theme song that I can fiddle around with and do whatever I want and we've got not just the Mario theme song but many others in here that you can change this by pressing the select button but I'm gonna have to give it a go and see how I do this game is different this game is different it's designed to produce harmony not a donor adrenaline so far we are seeing different kinds of reactions to electro plankton some test players are confused they keep looking for their score or the next enemy but others are hypnotized there are people who simply refuse to turn the game off no matter what your own reaction I think you can agree that this is definitely not from the world we currently call video games thank you Bill thank you so this is Nintendo's plan make our existing game world much better para del does better Mario's better partnerships creating games like resident evil 4 but also exploring other worlds in interactive entertainment for us this is a passion this is a mission of adventure and most importantly we want to use the creative heart for our entire industry to take that journey with us you may remember from e3 last year that we explain that des had two meanings to our screen and develop a system an nintendo revolution is a developer's system - with IBM we are creating revolutions coprocessor which we have codenamed Broadway because Broadway is a capital of live entertainment with the ATI we are developing the graphic chipset codename Hollywood because Hollywood is a capital or movie entertainment with revolution we are determined to create the new capital of interactive entertainment now a couple of specs specifics first contrary to much speculation I can announce today that evolution will be backward compatible [Applause] you [Applause] the best of the Nintendo GameCube library will still be enjoyed by players years from now second as I said area we intended to incorporate virus technology in all we do therefore intend oh revolution will be Wi-Fi enabled built into every system [Applause] thank you and third even though the gaming experience enjoyed by players will be far different on revolution developing for it will be familiar it will not require a steep new learning curve in this way just like Nintendo DS it's a place where the best idea not the biggest budget will win [Applause] and make no mistake we expect third-party publishers will be free supportive of what we are we are doing from this point forward in support of all of our product lines Nintendo will be expanding our development reach some of these new games will come from larger internal teams some from the kinds of game partnerships we formed with third parties over recent years maybe someday we'll work on a game together I'd like that if you don't mind I will finish today with memories from one more franchise in my development carrier Super Smash Brothers at the time it was being developed for Nintendo GameCube I was already working full-time for Nintendo but my heart told me I was still a developer so I assigned myself to how to rejoin the team finishing the game once again I was reading on the Japanese developers diet of chips pizza and the rice balls and walking through the night from the offices it was possible to see Mount Fuji which many say is most impressive if you are willing to wake up and see it at all but during this period just as years before with our Kirby games we at how could see the sun shining on the Mount Mountain before we ever went to bed many say the site of the first light on Mount Fuji in inspire them but for me I hope I never see it again I also remember the first version of smash burden developed for Nintendo 64 the concept for the game as you know was to take the classic rendering in Tendo franchise characters and have them as you say here in America pits the heck out of each other the idea was not brand new they certainly have being a lot of fighting games and the characters looked pretty much the same way they always had so when we brought the idea to Nintendo the concept did not sound hip or cool or revolutionary and because of all this there were people both inside and outside Nintendo who did not strongly favor our idea and this was the environment that our team worked under that attitude remain until the moment of truth the moment when testers began picking up the controllers and actually playing the game this is what happened people smiled then laughed then began shouting to each other that was the moment when everything for Smash Brothers changed and I must tell you this was also one of them proudest moment in my development career yes the Smash Brothers series has become a great while worldwide success because it sold over 10 million copies worldwide thank you very much but the memory of that first moment when the testers began to play stays with me always that is that moment that I call success we had have found a way to bring our idea to life our team believed deeply in the concept and we did not waver in our approach so in this important sense we at how we adjust like every one of you even if we come from different sides of the world speak different languages even if we eat too many chips or ice balls even if we have different tastes in games every one of us here today is identical in the most important way each one of us has the heart of the gamer thank you very much for your time [Applause] [Music]

Channel: GDC

Views: 174,072

Keywords: gdc, talk, panel, game, games, gaming, development, hd, design, Thumbnail, Music (TV Genre), Video Game (Industry), Role-playing Game (Game Genre)

Id: RMrj8gdUfCU

Length: 60min 23sec (3623 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 14 2015