E3 interviews

Hi everyone. It finally happened: I transcribed the relevant parts of my E3 interviews for you here. That is how much I love you. Enjoy - and please read the legal note at the end of the post before you republish the post or any part of it.

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Satoru Iwata
President, Nintendo Co. Ltd.

A lot of people are still waiting for a big secret. Miyamoto-San and yourself have said so. Was it the speaker on the Wiimote or are there still secrets to come?

"That - and Wiiconnect24, which we recently announced. We have not yet announced details about this. Well, maybe you are underestimating the power or potential of Wiiconnect24 now. After all, Wii is a console that can be connected to the internet 24 hours a day with minimal consumption of power. In the near future we can reveal what it can do an then you can understand many secrets behind the Wii machine."

Can you give any examples of what it can do now?

"Wii is going to become the machine which is new every day and which is for everybody. Because every day you are able to receive something new with the Wiiconnect24 feature. While you are sleeping, you may be receiving some new courses, weapons or stages for the games you are playing. Or you may be receiving some messages from one of your friends. And when you receive a message with your Wii, the Wii disc insertion slot is going to light up to tell you someting new is happening with Wii. (...) If we can intrigue people to turn on the Wii every day, then we can change the relatonship between videogames and human beings."

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Robbie Bach
Chief Xbox Officer, Microsoft

Now, both of your competitors are using some kind of gyroscopic control. Are you not going to be left out in the cold as far as playability is concerned?

"There are two things to know. One: we did gyroscopic controls in a controller six years ago. We know exactly how interesting it is. And it is useful for a very narrow segment of the games. So it is interesting as an add-on. It's not at all interesting as the main controller for your game console and we know that from experience. We also know that Sony took out of their controller the ability to get rumble feedback and tactile feedback. And that is the number one requested feature for people as an add-on to their controller. So we think their controller actually went down in capability, not up."

So if Sony is not going to be much competiton, what about Nintendo Wii?

"Well, Nintendo has a very focussed business model and a fairly narrow set of customers. They will do great with those customers but it is a very young audience, it is not an audience that is into broad mainstream entertainment, it is much more of the toy entertainment category. We think they will do well there, but we think that the mainstream part of the market is in the broader entertainment space that we are in and we think we can very effectively compete with them."

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Peter Molyneux
Founder, Lionhead Studios

I would love for you to do a Wii game. Are you not itching to work on such an innovative console?

"Well, the controller is the thing, that is what I love. And I think there is a lot of interest in this industry as a whole about how people control games and what they do when they are controlling games. And things like cameras are becoming important, online is massively important, connecting to other devices is massively important... I agree with you: the way... (gesticulates) it is very, very good. It is very interesting about that controller. I will be fascinated to see how motion detection comes out. But I do not think that the industry is going to stop there. I think that this is just the start of the industry questioning that thing that you hold."

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Doug Lombardi
Marketing Director , Valve Software

I remember Gabe Newell said the Xbox360's and PS3's business models were totally unattractive to him and he mentioned someting about developers in a stranglehold.

"There are these added obstacles of even getting onto the console, which in the old days people could justify because there were technological advances and what have you there. Now we are seeing the PC have these technological advances now and as this generation lives, the PC is going to keep leapfrogging and leapfrogging while those console platforms are frozen for the next four or five years."

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Denis Dyack
Founder, Silicon Knights

Why is Matt Casamassina so excited about Too Human?

"Matt and I are really close friends and we talk a lot, off the record. So he knows a bit more than most people. So I think that may be another reason why he's excited."

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Julian Eggebrecht
Founder, Factor 5
(translated from German)

How interested are you in Wii? You still have good contacts with Nintendo, right?

"We are still very good friends with Nintendo. And as a gamer, I am absolutely thrilled. Especially tennis and Super Mario Galaxy are fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. For me as an independent developer, there are two things to consider. First, (...) [what type of games are there] that are not already being developed by Nintendo? (...) Second, as soon as you try to opt more for photorealism, genres like Metroid or (...) Red Steel, I must say that I see the console lacking in graphics quality. (...) [From that perspective] I cannot ignore that the graphics are last generation."

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Cliff Bleszinski
Lead Designer, Epic Games

Did you have a chance to play Nintendo Wii? Of course, the graphics are not up to the Xbox360´s ...

"Graphics are very important but graphics are only part of the equation. What Nintendo has done is they have not opted for necessarily as high-end graphics. They opted for very interesting input devices and amazing game design and polish. You know, if something has the Nintendo name on it, you know it is going to be fun. Not a lot of people can say that.

Are you excited enough to actually...

"I have not had any chance to be hands-on with it. I can tell you now that there is no ... anytime soon that I will be developing myself. But I was on a panel with Hideo Kojima and Xavier from Ubi Soft who was demoing Red Steel yesterday. And I finally got to see it, though not use it yet. And it looks really, really cool. I mean, the whole system... it is like the Power Glove done right."

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Todd Hollenshead
Founder, id Software

Which console is id Software more interested in: is it more PS3 and Xbox360 - beautiful photorealistic graphics - or Wii, where you have a revolution in First Person Shooter control mechanisms but less graphics capability?

"Interesting question. At this point for us we are still kind of like you are with respect to getting information as Nintendo releases it about Wii and what it is going to be like. So we really have not gotten our hands on actual advanced hardware yet. So the stuff we are working on now is more the stuff we know, which is... we have access to the PS3 development kits and obviously the Xbox360. (...) The next project, sort of our super secret project we are working on at id, we have not announced or announced a title for, we do anticipate will be a multi-platform, across PC and multiple console launch. Multiple consoles means more than 360, so we definitely see no reason why it canot be there for 360, PS3 and PC. And we will have to see what we can do with Wii once we get more information about how what we are doing in our game will match what hardware Nintendo is making available."

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On a legal note: You are free to republish this entire post or individual excerpts from it, as long as you do not alter the content in any way and you also absolutely must cite the two following sources by copying and pasting the following HTML code alongside without alteration:

Sources: <a href=http://www.rtl2news.de>RTL II News</a>, <a href=http://nintendo-revolution.blogspot.com>Wii: Definitive speculation</a>

The interviews have been conducted on behalf of RTL II. Please appreciate that there are copyright issues attached to these interviews and, as a consequence, failure to give appropriate credit might result in legal action. Thank you.