Monday, 9 May 2011
Wii
The console was conceived in 2001, as the Nintendo GameCube was first seeing release. According to an interview with Nintendo's game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, the concept involved focusing on a new form of player interaction. "The consensus was that power isn't everything for a console. Too many powerful consoles can't coexist. It's like having only ferocious dinosaurs. They might fight and hasten their own extinction."
Two years later, engineers and designers were brought together to develop the concept further. By 2005, the controller interface had taken form, but a public showing at that year's Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) was withdrawn. Miyamoto stated that, "[W]e had some troubleshooting to do. So we decided not to reveal the controller and instead we displayed just the console." Nintendo president Satoru Iwata later unveiled and demonstrated the Wii Remote at the September Tokyo Game Show.
DS
The Nintendo DS is a portable game console produced by Nintendo, first released on November 21, 2004. A distinctive feature of the system is the presence of two separate LCD screens, the lower of which is a touchscreen, encompassed within a clamshell design, similar to the Game Boy Advance SP. The Nintendo DS also features a built-in microphone and supports wireless standard, allowing players to interact with each other within short range, or online with the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection service. The Nintendo DS is the first Nintendo console to be released in North America before Japan.
The Nintendo DS is the successor to the Game Boy Advance series of portable consoles, with the original and Lite models featuring single-player backwards compatibility with Game Boy Advance games. The console's name officially stands for "Developers' System", an expression of Nintendo's hope that the system would inspire innovative game design from developers. "DS" also stands for "Dual Screen", the system's most obviou
s and distinctive feature. As of December 31, 2010, all Nintendo DS models combined have sold 144.59 million units, making it the best selling handheld game console to date, and second best selling video game console overall, behind the PlayStation 2.
Q. I’m very curious about Nintendo’s decision to go after a casual audience when their competitors were chasing after hardcore gamers and HD. I’ve heard it said that Nintendo looked at the population of Japan and saw it was aging, and for its survival, it needed to diversify its audience. Is that accurate?
A. While it is true that the population in Japan is aging, that wasn’t the impetus for the strategic decisions that we’ve made with Wii. What we were looking at was what we thought was a worldwide issue, which is that video games had gradually become something that were only enjoyed by people who were core gaming fans, and not something that were enjoyed by the wider population.
While other game makers had felt that there was a future in taking the current style of games and making them more complex and more advanced, and that that would be able to provide them with future market for their product, we really came to the belief that video games should be more than just more complex versions of what we’ve seen in the past. We felt that video games should instead include a variety of different elements and a variety of different styles of entertainment that can appeal to a much broader audience. And that that was really where the future lay.
Q. Following on that, it was a risk to come out with a console that deliberately didn’t court hardcore gamers, and with such a different control scheme — particularly after the GameCube (which enjoyed only moderate success). At what point did you know that the risk had paid off?
A. The first that I’d want to clarifyis that the concept that Wii intentionally does not cater to core gamers is probably a misconception, and perhaps one that’s almost a PR tactic used by some of the other companies to paint us as a company that’s not targeting core gamers. But in fact, while we may not be focusing on the high-end graphics and technology that core gamers would typically be drawn to, the types of games we create, and continue to create, are certainly games that people who play games would certainly want to continue playing.
I think that there’s probably one other element to it, and that’s that our view of how we use E3 has changed. For a very long time, E3 was an event where — and certainly Nintendo included — catered specifically to the core gamer. Now we look at more …an opportunity for us to introduce new concepts and new types of play that we intend to bring to the broader audience, particularly because of the media that gathers at E3 now.
So while attending an E3 event like this, they might be given the impression that Nintendo is no longer focusing on the games that appeal to the core gamer, in fact we’re still working on many of those titles, but it’s just not the type of event where we’ll be showcasing that anymore.
Shigeru Miyamoto
Shigeru Miyamoto (宮本 茂 Miyamoto Shigeru) (born November 16, 1952 in Sonobe, Kyoto, Japan) is a Japanese video game designer and producer. Miyamoto was born and raised in the Kyoto Prefecture; the natural surroundings of Kyoto inspired much of Miyamoto's later work. He is mainly known for his work at the video game production company Nintendo, where he created some of the most successful video game franchises of all time, including Mario, Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, Star Fox, F-Zero, and Pikmin. He currently manages the Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development branch, which handles many of Nintendo's top-selling titles. Miyamoto's games have been seen on every Nintendo video game console, with his earliest work appearing on arcade machines. His games have received critical praise from many reviewers, and he has been the recipient of various awards.
Mario (Basic Info)
As Nintendo's mascot, Mario is arguably the most famous character in video game history, and his image is commonly associated with video games. Mario games, as a whole, have sold more than 210 million units, making the Mario series the best-selling video game series of all time. Outside platform games, he has appeared in video games of other genres, including the Mario Kart racing series, sports games, such as the Mario Tennis and Mario Golf series, role-playing games such as Paper Mario and Super Mario RPG, and even educational games, such as Mario is Missing and Mario's Time Machine. He has inspired television shows, film, comics, and a line of licensed merchandise.Mario was created by Shigeru Miyamoto in his attempts to produce a best-selling video game for Nintendo, after previous titles, such as Sheriff, had not achieved the same success as other titles such as Pac-Man. Originally, Miyamoto wanted to create a video game that used the characters Popeye, Bluto, and Olive Oyl. At the time, however, Miyamoto was unable to acquire a license to use the characters, and ended up making Jumpman (later known as Mario), Donkey Kong, and Pauline.
Miyamoto developed Mario with the idea of using him as a "go to" character that could be put in any title as needed, albeit in cameo appearances as at the time he was not expecting Mario to become popular. To this end he originally called the character "Mr. Video", comparing his intent to have Mario appear in later games to the cameos done by Alfred Hitchcockwithin his films.
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