Game Informer: We wanted to start with the Revolution and some thoughts about why its going to be way more awesome than anything else
George Harrison: Thats a good setup (laughs). First, let me just say that its good to be here. Its unusual that someone other than Nintendo is unveiling the first game on Revolution and you guys have done a great job on getting an inside track on this. As we talked about this, Mike and Tony and the whole team were in Redmond and they told us about this opportunity and we discussed it an the only thing that Mr. Iwata really asked was that we tell you the whole story on Revolution, so while youre going to see the game and get very excited about it, we wanted to set up the background on it. Because it is unusual usually Nintendo is the first one to unveil our babies relative to a new system, so its a great opportunity, I think, for Ubisoft.
Anticipation around a new system is always huge, so this year for you guys in particular its going to be lots and lots of new stuff to see and think about at the show. For us the challenge was, how do you think of something different? We have now three competitors in the marketplace, which as you know, it was only two for the last generation. Weve done okay on GameCube, but we wanted to do better. So once we started to think about what do you do for your next console, clearly the thinking in Japan was, youve got to do something different. You know you cant just go out and say, Weve got more horsepower, prettier pictures, and those kinds of things. Thats an important part of the system, but without something more than that, the chances that wed do better on the next system than with GameCube were slim to none. So the thinking went back to throw on more basics. And starting with the market in Japan, which has been kind of soft for many years, at least since 1997, the question is what are they going to do to revive the market in Japan? They started with basic facts like the shrinking of the gaming population men under 25, that segment has been declining. The general population is going to start to decline. So they realized that they had to attract some people who maybe hadnt played games before or hadnt played games recently. So they set out to think about what was preventing people from getting involved.
The first personification of that was the Nintendo DS and thinking about the handheld area and, even in that case wheres its not all that complicated, there were still some barriers to the interface. That led us to the idea of the touchscreen, the voice recognition, all those things that we think makes gaming more accessible. At the same time, it causes us to think differently about the software. So while there have been some great, familiar games coming out on the DS using those new features, its the games that are different like Nintendogs and the Brain series that have really opened up the possibilities. So the idea was, How do you bring that same kind of thinking to Revolution? The first part was to try to give an interface that was more easily accessible to anybody, really, for the most part. Thats where the unique controller idea came in. Coupling that was improved horsepower in the machine itself. We think it opens up a lot of possibilities.
GI: So the concept for how the Revolution was going to work was developed after the DS had come to the market already?
Harrison: I think that consoles, generally, are the sequential activity. If you look at the history of the business, you launch one console and almost immediately begin thinking about the next one
you launch them sort of one at a time. The handheld area is more of an ongoing thought process where you have new ideas and when you finally strike one that you think makes sense, then you launch it. Its not necessarily on a fixed schedule. So the thinking about a next console in terms of chip configuration was already beginning as soon as GameCube was launched. The idea of when to begin thinking about the interface came maybe later. I dont know exactly when, but that was part of the new thinking that Mr. Iwata brought to the business to say, What are we going to do thats going to be different that will actually give us a chance to have a different business performance in this next generation? I think that ideating with Mr. Miyamoto was really what led to thoughts about possible controllers.
GI: Obviously, the controller is probably the biggest selling point of the console, and youve mentioned that youre trying to bring in new gamers. Probably the biggest question that I have for you then is, if these people are new gamers, do they know what the status quo is in the gaming world? Do they know that the Revolution is different than the status quo?
Harrison: They probably, at this point, know very little. The truth is that theyre not really focused on the industry the way that your readers are. Your readers are pouring over every obscure website, every patent filing, and those kinds of things to figure out whats next and whats coming up. The people whove drifted away from gaming, frankly, were just assuming that whats going on today is what caused them to drift away. That really comes down to the trajectory of the industry, which has been that as you have more horsepower, the games not only become prettier, they become more complex potentially and the controllers themselves become more complex with more and more buttons
This is a funny piece of history, but we did focus groups back in the day of SNES and Genesis and at that point Genesis was doing pretty well. I think that they had fifty percent of the market and we couldnt understand it. We went into the focus groups and we would say, They dont have as many colors, their system cant produce as many colors as we can, their controller doesnt have as many buttons as we do
And the consumers would eventually say to us, you know, to be honest, Im really not that good and the fact that I can press one button and be successful with Sonic, I like that.
So early on we had some signals that there were many people who werent looking forward to more complicated control schemes. I can remember a time when Killer Instinct was released and at that time Ken Lob worked for us as one of our game gurus. He came into my office and he was all excited and said, Oh, Ive got a great new combination for you. So he starts describing this combination that was kind of a fourteen to seventeen button combination, and I said that I cant remember fourteen numbers, let alone a fourteen button combination. But that was, I think, just an indication of the divergence of this whole thing. And at the same time we saw success with things like Mario Kart and Mario Party series that led us to believe that there are still people out there who still just want to have a little fun and dont want it to be inordinately complicated.
GI: You said that with Revolution and you said the same thing with DS that youre trying to attract new gamers. How do you plan to keep the core fan base out there thats so rabid and so pleased, without just relying on your core franchise and core characters like Mario and Metroid and Zelda?
Harrison: There would be, probably, two approaches. So you look at the new controller, two possibilities: you can figure out better ways to interface with existing games. Youre going to see an example when you go to Paris with the Ubisoft team. Whats a traditional game? A great new approach that uses the unique controller, in the same way that, I havent seen it yet, but Im sure you will, some great new sports games from EA that take advantage of the controller and control scheme as a great new way to make it work and seem intuitive. But then, so thats one way a better way to play existing game ideas.
The second way is game ideas or things that might not even be called games that are completely un-thought of. Thats why Nintendogs was so successful on Nintendo DS or like the Brain Training games that have sold over a million copies each. These arent even things that we would think of today as being games, but theyre entertainment. Theyre diversions. So I think that the real prize is going to go to the development teams that can think of something that hasnt existed before. Remember that for most of this, what we call audience expansion, theyre just looking to fill some time. Theyre not looking for something thats going to take them 40, 50, 60 hours to complete. So the worlds of Tetris and stuff like that that was so successful in the early days because anyone could do them and at the same time they were easy to get started and were addictive and challenging as you went through. Those are the things that we see as keys to being successful in the future.
GI: On the subject of E3, were going to see some of the standards, but do you think that youre going to wow the crowd with some really kind of different games the you think Nintendo normally wouldnt show at a kind of console launch? Is it really that different as far as your lineup?
Harrison: I think so. Youll see a mix of familiar franchises and new and unexpected. One of the things that Mr. Miyamoto said to us while we were there as a group in January, he said, Even within Nintendo, its hard to get people to think differently. He seems to be a unique individual who can think completely differently and come up with ideas like Pikmin or Nintendogs and things. But he said that young people come to work for Nintendo or they come to work for Square Enix, and they come there because they want to make Final Fantasy games or they want to make the kind of games they loved growing up. When you say to them that you want them to forget all that and think of something completely different, he said that its sometimes difficult. So theyve started to reorganize into little skunkworks and things to try to focus those people on thinking of different things for different audiences. These are mostly guys under the age of thirty-five, you know 20-35, for them to put themselves in to the head of a 25 or 35 or 40-year-old woman or 40-year-old man and think of what kind of entertainment they might enjoy, thats kind of a tough challenge. But thats what we have to do.
GI: As you mentioned, were talking about third party games for the Revolution. How much support do you think youre going to have from third parties at the launch?
Harrison: I think its going to be pretty broad. I dont have an exact answer because Ive only been interfacing with some of them. Weve heard a few of them from their financial calls. We heard EA talking about having a few games that they were going to be showing at E3 and also are hoping to launch with. So its hard for me to know what the breadth and depth is. Weve got more than 1,000 developer kits including the controller kits, out, so there should be plenty there. One of the lessons we tried to learn from GameCube was that we kept things too close. And so as we got ready to launch, we had some of our own great games but third parties were kind of behind the eight ball in terms of being able to have games ready.
GI: Do you think that theres going to be any disparity in the types of games you see from first party to third party? As you mentioned, youre focusing on doing a lot of different types of games and the Ubisoft project is a little more traditional. Do you think that youre going to see that kind of a split or do you think that youll see a broad range of games across all developers?
Harrison: Well, were hoping to see a broad range. Creativity not only in existing franchises from the third party developers, but also unexpected things. But we know that with any new generation of machines, the creativity really begins to blossom once people show their first projects and everyone gets to see it and it becomes really competitive. Games continue to grow in creativity throughout the generation. So for us, for me, this will be the first time to see a lot of these third party games at the show floor. And I think that in itself will start to stimulate more creativity amongst the third parties.
GI: One big thing that a lot of people have been talking about is that Revolution will be more focused, obviously, on gameplay rather than graphics. How important do you think that the visuals are in the success of the console?
Harrison: Well I think that theyre important, but maybe on a different dimension. The dimension that people mostly think about is photo-realism and so you see, for instance, an Xbox 360 game and they show a racing game and everyone sees how shiny the cars are and that the leaves are flowing and that type of thing, but thats really only one dimension. For some games, photrealism is important. In many other games, the choice of graphics is really just an artistic choice, in the same way that animations there. The Simpsons TV show, for instance, wouldnt be half as funny if it were live action. So the stylized choice is what really makes it. You know, the Revolution is going to be a multiple of the GameCube in terms of capabilities, a dramatic improvement as possible there, but its really going to come down to the creativity of the gameplay and the story itself thats going to drive this whole piece forward.
GI: How are you nurturing third parties with development for the system because if a team is making a game for next generation consoles, they can pretty much say, Okay were going to have an Xbox 360 version, and a PS3 version, and they can kind of share resources. But when it comes down to the Revolution to do the controller, they might have to have a separate team. Thats obviously going to cost third parties a little extra money.
Harrison: Im not a development expert, obviously, but it wont take as much as you might think. So we prepared some demonstrations that we had been taking out to the developers for the last nine months, and one of those is that we took was Metroid Prime 2, which is a GameCube game. And in less than three weeks they were able to change the control scheme to show people what that could look like with the new freestyle controller. So part of our job is to get the development kits out early enough so people have time to work with it. Part of it was providing the support, so we have teams who are on the road almost habitually, going to the various studios and showing people whats possible. And also to show them that their initial thought, which may have been similar to yours, is not the case that its really simple to try to move this over to a different control scheme whether its for a sports game or whether its for something unexpected. And I think youll see, when you get the demo of the game at Ubisoft, how truly intuitive it is. The developers themselves will have to tell you how difficult that was
. Was it difficult and time consuming or was it fairly straightforward? But certainly the result, as I saw a few weeks ago, was really impressive.
GI: Is it like, for example, Red Steel uses nunchuck style is that going to be something like a peripheral that Ubisoft would put out with their game, or will that be something that you get when you buy a Nintendo Revolution or is that going to be something that you have to purchase on top of a Revolution?
Harrison: It would be something that I think Ubisoft or another publisher would have to include in their game, but were still working on the actual configuration, so, in terms of the core set, thats going to lead to a question; Im sure, about pricing. Well we havent announced that yet and we might not even announce it at E3. Were in something of a cat and mouse game with competitors to see what theyll say. But the idea is that you should have everything you need with the Revolution to get underway. There was a bit, I think, slight of hand with the Xbox 360 and its different versions because, really, you needed the more expensive version to get everything you needed to get going. It might have made for a nice retail strategy to advertise that lower price, but the truth is that people want to be satisfied particularly if youre going to an audience thats not quite as savvy of all the things that they need to buy when they want to get going. So were working on that configuration right now, questions like one controller versus two and the nunchuck add on and those types of things.
GI: Do you think, historically, peripherals from Nintendo have had a short life of like three games and then kind of out. Now, obviously, since youre packing in the Revolution controller, it is the standard, so that kind of alleviates that aspect. But, there are also all of these opportunities to plug all of these things into the unit and do all kinds of crazy different things. Have you guys tried to pare down what youre going to let people add on to it?
Harrison: Its kind of wide open, but historically I think that with our internal development we have been the ones that go widest in terms of peripheral usage. I think that third party publishers will more so stick to common control schemes, so, were the ones who introduce bongos. We werent necessarily the ones who led with dance mats and those things, but I think that there will be enough in the core add-ons to provide a wide variety of gameplay. Where it goes from there is kind of hard to say. Were very optimistic that whether youre trying to do something completely new with the freestyle controller or if you say, You know what I dont want to invest yet, to take that kind of risk. I want to do a more traditional control scheme. Youll have what you need to be able to play the game.
GI: What did Nintendo learn from the Xbox 360 launch?
Harrison: Well we learned a lot of things not to do. They were obviously convinced that being first was more important than being ready in some ways. So theyve struggled a lot with supply. You have retailer relationships that you have to worry about there. Although, ultimately, when you have success, they forget about all of the hard times at the beginning. They did some things, pricing and others that we think are stretching the limits of getting to a mass audience. Theres obviously a difference in the first year, in the first holiday season, that people are going to buy this new product whether its Xbox 360 or Revolution or PlayStation 3. You know theyre willing to pay pretty much anything. But that doesnt necessarily mean that youve got a follow on audience thats going to feel like its accessible for them.
So for us its, where we started and where we want to get to are somewhat related. Were going to try our best to have as much product as possible. But in any startup, when youre producing a new chipset, the yield factors really determine what you have at launch. Were also determined to try to get into all the territories of the world at launch. I think that, for us, thats fairly important. Were not going to know until we get into the summer when the actual production gets under way on the chipsets and what the real quantities are. You can see right now were launching DS Lite in Japan, struggling with the startup. I dont know if youve actually tried to find one, but they havent had enough product in Japan to fulfil their own demand. And so were waiting to peg our own launch date until theyre confident that they have enough to fulfil their own market as well as our market. You only have one chance to make that kind of first impression, and particularly in a holiday season you have to have a substantial quantity to be able to fulfil demand.
GI: Jim Merrick said that you guys were shooting for a worldwide launch of Revolution, is that still the case and do you think that having a worldwide launch is important?
Harrison: Yeah, were still shooting for a worldwide launch before the end of the calendar year. I dont know if its going to be even possible for it to be on the same day. Well have to see as we get after E3 and see how we feel things are coming along. I think its important to not let too much time lag between the territories. Clearly, for us, the Japanese market might be the most important its the home market, its the chance to reset the clock to the main competitor, which is Sony, the only competitor. So they need to make a good impression. What we found on the DS, though, is that the shopping patterns varied a little bit as you get closer to the end of the calendar year. Holiday shopping comes more in late December. Our holiday shopping here, you have to be ready to go and more in place before Thanksgiving. The actual scheduling of these things is something that Im sure Mr. Iwata will be thinking about over the summer. Thats why Im saying that E3 you might not hear necessarily a hard launch date, or even a price point.
GI: But youre fairly confident that it will be cheaper than the 360?
Harrison: Yeah. Certainly in terms of intention, that is our goal to come in at a slightly more mass market price. You know, a lot has to happen. We have to look at exchange rates, what elements physically get packed in, those kinds of things. But I think that all of that will be under discussion and then waiting to see if Sony declares themselves. The speculation right now about the PS3 pricing is just unbelievable. For most normal consumers it would be thought of as kind of out of reach. But its hard to tell yet exactly what theyre going to do.
GI: Theres a lot of speculation that all the guesses about the price will help them when they announce a price thats less than $900.
Harrison: A lot of it starts when you start to build the specs of the machine and you build a very aggressive and complex machine that really delivers many, many different functions. That comes with a price tag. And the Cell processor itself is not necessarily cheap. So well have to see. We tend to think that Sony and Microsoft are more focused on each other, and they probably are. And that gives us an opportunity to go out there and surprise people. I think that in some ways were cast as the underdog, which is okay because it allows us to go in there and surprise people and maybe address a different audience and not worry about the person whos just thinking about pure horsepower.
GI: So what do you think those companies are doing right?
Harrison: Certainly with the case of Sony, theyve got a huge momentum going for the last decade. Theyve done a good job and so its hard to look at and say that theres one thing that theyve done well except to say that theyve managed their business extremely well. Most of the big games that have really put their hardware on the map have come from other people, not from themselves. So theyve sort of created an environment there where developers could bring the games that put them on the map. And theyve managed their franchise well over the course of 10 years longevity. For Xbox, theyre still sort of scrambling and trying to fight their way out. They tried to buy their way in with the first Xbox, and ultimately had one or two particularly good titles on that platform. But they have a different agenda, which is to make it a Trojan horse media center. Theyre pushing that very hard and time will tell whether thats a viable strategy or not.
GI: How do you feel about the online component? Obviously, with Revolution, everyones in the game now, I guess, so do you think that the older games that are going to be available from Nintendo
Ive heard some third parties say that they havent even been approached and that only first party games will be included for download. Is that going to expand at all?
Harrison: I would say that were in the midst of negotiating with the third parties. Im not sure where that is yet, whether theyre going to be available at launch with Revolution virtual console or not. But the intention is certainly to have it fairly broad. But its also not just about looking backwards and trying to say, How can we recycle our great library of games and franchises? There will be other possibilities going forward, too. Add some promotional content or new content to those types of things. Itll probably stop short of complete games just because I dont think that you can download enough to bump a whole complete new game. But it should open up opportunities to expansion for areas well beyond just the historic games.
GI: Do you have anything like Live Arcade? Obviously, you could make fun little games with the remote that people could sit around and play and purchase
Harrison: I think that those kinds of ideas are all on the table. Were working right now on the consumer interface, how are we going to make this thing look and feel accessible to consumers? Were also working on the business model and how to sort through pricing purchase versus subscription versus rental, those kinds of things. The good news of course is that in the virtual world, those are the kinds of things that even if you make decisions on how you launch, you can go on and test a whole variety of those kinds of things. We do believe that theres an opportunity as we go forward for developers to maybe test a small game idea or game concept. Right now the risks of investing in a new game idea to completion and launching it to the retail channel with the substantial amount of inventory and having it fail are huge. So the possibility of people experimenting with new types of gameplay through a virtual console on Revolution we think is pretty exciting.
GI: Is there any concern about games like Street Fighter II, which has appeared on past Nintendo consoles, appearing on Xbox Live Arcade? Do you think youre getting into similar territory there?
Harrison: I think theres certainly going to be a competition for all this content and not just between ourselves and the other consoles. Some of them are being licensed to other platforms cell phones and other sorts of devices. It seems to be a pretty big effort to go out of their way and chase that content for a variety of purposes. So for us, were going to get as much interesting content as we can on the virtual console and one thing that we have that no one else does, of course, is the deepest library of exclusive games. That will be sort of a lead for us, but we know that by itself its not enough. There needs to be other content there as well.
GI: Youve seen more Revolution games, obviously, than anyone else in this room. How do you feel that Red Steel fits into the whole scheme of Revolution and the launch?
Harrison: For us, its very exciting. There are some things that we do very well for ourselves at Nintendo, the nature of the games that Mr. Miyamoto and his teams make are wonderful, but he doesnt really do games like Red Steel or things outside of that. So for us, when we saw it, and they had been working quite a long time on this game, we were really surprised and pleased at the level of finish that they have on the game. It showed us that not only could someone adapt the controller to a more familiar feeling type of game, but they also can have the creativity to create a great storyline. This is a from scratch, brand new story that theyre telling. So for us its very exciting and I think that they have a great opportunity to have a really stand out game at the show this year.
GI: Will you guys have a lot of third party games in your booth this year, or will it be again focused on Nintendo product?
Harrison: No, I think that well have a wide variety of third party games in our booth. We would also like to have these games featured in the publishers booths as well. We tend to live in our own world a little bit, maybe a Nintendo disease, but our booth is five percent of the showfloor. We want people to not only get excited when they come to our booth and see these great third party games, but also as they see it as they go about the show floor to not only get excited about these games, but also use it as a measure of excitement by the publishers and the kinds of things that theyre doing as well.
GI: Speaking about E3, Miyamoto has been saying that theres one more big secret about the Revolution. Is that still going to be revealed at E3?
Harrison: I think that theres maybe more than one secret. I think that there will be new things revealed at E3. What we dont quite know right now, and you will know by the time this is published, is what Mr. Iwata will say at GDC. So were working with him on his speech and hell make the call on what, if anything else, is revealed on Revolution at GDC. I think theres always a concern, competitively, that we had to unveil the controller because we had to get people underway working with it. But we would have preferred not to give your competitors that much longer to think about it. So there are a few other things I think theyre going to save for E3, but he may have something to say at GDC as well.
GI: The DS has kind of proven out the theory that different is good, but at the same time, people have expectations of what some games are, at least some of the people who make this a $10 billion a year industry. Do you worry about alienating those kinds of people with these different kinds of gameplay? Or do you think that its charm will work its way through?
Harrison: When we talked about audience expansion as a way to grow the business, weve basically said that for us this has to be an and business, it cant be an or business. We cant add new casual players at a greater or even equal amount of core players that we lose. So weve got to find a way to continue to satisfy the core players. So for core players, which are mostly your audience, theyve got to be convinced that this is a better way to play a video game video games that they like, not just unique new games for an expanded audience.
Not having seen it yet, I dont know. Is it a better way to play Madden or is it just going to be using the cradle in a more traditional sense? We believe that there are a lot of possibilities that can be used to stimulate core gamers and make them believe. Weve given examples of the sword and the shield in Zelda, but it remains to be seen. We also know that some of the harshest critics are the core gamers because they have expectations and they have history and they have things that they like and are comfortable with. It would be as if you took someone whos a race car driver and said, Okay, were going to take away your steering wheel and give you a joystick. And they would be, Well what am I supposed to do with that? Maybe its a better way to drive a car, I dont know. But its certainly going to be unusual at first and we just have to make sure that people spend enough time with it and try a variety of things to get comfortable and be, well, yeah. This is pretty interesting and pretty exciting.
GI: So using traditional styled games like Red Steel in a new way is very important to have right away?
Harrison: It will. And while I think its unusual because we talk so much about market expansion, to have the first game thats going to be publicized be one thats more traditional in its nature of game, I think that its a great demonstration of how that common game theme can be executed with this new controller. Its actually a much more intuitive way to go than with button controls. In some ways people say it feels more like a PC interface. Thats really what you want. You want people to feel like Im not focusing on the nature of this interface. The interface to me just becomes intuitive. If I want to point at something or highlight it or shoot it or whatever, I just literally point. And if I want to move, I just use the joystick to move around pretty effortlessly.
GI: So do you have any funny stories of Iwata calling Kutaragi and saying, If you rip off my remote control idea, youre buying drinks.?
Harrison: (laughs) No, I dont think there are any stories like that. Kutaragi certainly has a lot on his own plate. You hate to say that the future of Sony rests on this, but for the last several years the game division has been their strength and theres no more risky time than transition. So I think theyve got their own challenges to worry about. I think theyre oddly very focused on Microsoft and feeling very challenged by Microsoft.
GI: You said that Sony is kind of resting on the PlayStation brand, and that its helping their electronics division. But obviously GameCube didnt do that well, and if Revolution hypothetically fails, do you think that Nintendo will say, Eh, I dont think were going to do the home console thing anymore. Were just going to stick with handhelds?
Harrison: Its too early, obviously, to think about that. We know that we need to do better on Revolution than we did on GameCube. I mean, GameCube was okay, but we need to get a bigger install base. We need to be consistently successful around the world, but were in the entertainment business. Were always going to figure out something that we believe can attract people and entertain them. Whether thats a piece of hardware for the home or a piece of hardware thats portable outside, were just going to keep plowing ahead, doing things that are interesting. And were confident that were going to attract people. At this point, all signs point for us to Revolution being something thats interesting and exciting and has more potential than GameCube. We just have to go down that road with as much power as we can.
GI: So what are the lessons you learned from the GameCube?
Harrison: I think [its] a couple of things. I think that, oddly enough, when people talk about horsepower, sheer graphical processing and things, the system that had the least impressive technical specs, the PlayStation 2, became the huge winner in the last generation. That told us that it wasnt always just about horsepower. One of the things that we did learn, and one of the reasons that were here today is that you have to get third party involvement early and they have to be able to get access early.
Nintendo, I think historically, until fairly recently, has been pretty closed. Not letting third parties get involved on our systems early, not letting them get going. For Revolution, that was a clear strategy change get them involved early and youre not talking about a large number, but a handful of the big successful publishers and developers around the world, get them involved early and let them have access to it. One thing that we certainly learned from PlayStation 2s success was that you never know where the next hit game is going to come from. Grand Theft Auto had been out there, I think, as a PC game thats okay, not great. But suddenly it just rocketed and carried the PlayStation 2 along. The fact that you never know where the next great game is going to come from, it could be Red Steel. You have to open up the aperture a little bit, even though were confident in our own ability to do great software. I think that, for GameCube, was kind of it. The other thing we recognize is that you really make your reputation in the first year. Youve got to deliver software, not just at launch, but youve got to deliver software in the first six to nine months after launch. It has to be solid software. In GameCube, we didnt quite have that. We had kind of a drought for six months after it launched. By that time, your reputation starts to solidify and its hard to reverse that after a while.
GI: Will the teams at Nintendo be able to supply more titles? Will we see more games from Nintendo on the console this time around? It just seems that you get a good influx of games in the beginning and then theres this expectation and then that expectation is dragged out for the rest of the lifecycle. I think that people get really excited and they want to play Zelda and they want to play Mario and they want to try Red Steel and these other different things, but then theres that wait that you talked about. Will you say that there are going to be more games on Revolution from Nintendo than there were on GameCube?
Harrison: I think that part of the reason that that occurs is the changing technology. When I started in the industry in the early 90s, as a publisher or developer you could do a game, release it for Christmas, do another the next Christmas all in a year. Now as the technology advances, its taking you two years, two plus years to do a game. So the turnaround time became much slower. Thats the reason that for us the third parties have become so important, a steady flow of games cant just come from Nintendo. But we have also had a philosophy that Mr. Miyamotos judgement is so good that if he tells us that a game can be better, and no one was more disappointed than we were, the sales and marketing people, last year when he told us that Zelda wasnt going to make it for the holidays, and yet his track record says youve got to trust him.
If he says that it can be better or it can be improved, you kind of have to go with that. Youd love to have a steady flow of software, but Mike and I were talking this morning at breakfast, and there have been publishers who have gone out of business because they force games out Acclaim a little bit. They had some great franchises, and yet their desire to meet their quarterly goals caused them to force out games that werent as good as they could be. For us its always that difficult balance of making sure that we have that steady flow of software and making sure we dont release things prematurely. But thats, again, where opening up to the third party publishing community is so important because they have the ability to create many more games in terms of quantity than we can.
GI: You brought up Zelda and I have to ask. Nintendo keeps saying that its a GameCube game. Why not have that be the super kick ass Revolution launch title that it could be?
Harrison: I dont know. Youll see it at E3. Well unveil it. The game will launch this year. Its coming along great as a GameCube game. If you buy a Revolution you can of course play all the GameCube games just by inserting a disc. What other thoughts and possibilities Mr. Miyamoto is thinking about and working with now that he has a unique controller
we dont really know. I think that, for us, having it get out there and selling as big a quantity as we can, really speaks to the GameCube install base rather than the Revolution install base is really the most important thing. Work beyond that I think is going to depend on whether Mr. Miyamoto thinks that there is something more that can be added by considering Revolution, or whether theres time to be able to do something like that.
GI: The basic idea of Revolution is that graphics are good, gameplay is king. I think its kind of funny that Zelda is a perfect example. Its an art style, an artistic choice, so it doesnt even matter what system its on, but by saying that its something that wouldnt go on Revolution, that you wouldnt make for Revolution, doesnt that go against the kind of ideas that Revolution is about?
Harrison: Well there are a lot of considerations there. I mean, all the work thats been done on the GameCube development tools, I dont honestly know how easy that is to transfer or not. Mr. Miyamotos stock and trade is delivering surprises, so were waiting to see all the final stuff that hes going to have for E3. Hes aware of all of the excitement around Zelda and the possibilities and speculation of what could be, and well just have to see when we get there.
GI: The next generation has introduced a $60 price point for games, which, especially looking at 360, many of them were just ports with better graphics. Do you think that games from Revolution will fall into this trap of the $60 game?
Harrison: To me its kind of a risk, you understand why it happens the development costs have gone up, the publishers would like to be able to sell at a higher price, retailers it makes a little difference to them, but not a lot. I still think that the majority of the titles are going to come at the $50 price point. There might be some that have special features or special content that might go a little higher than that. The reason I say that is that this is still a discretionary purchase for people and if you look at things like movie DVDs and costs of music these days, theyre going in the opposite direction theyre going lower.
If you really want a consumer to buy five or six games and year and not two or three, then you cant get the price up too high. Its in the business that, if someones only buying one game, we get the core users like maybe yourselves or your readers, someones only buying two or three games a year, that means that there are big gaps. Every time that theres a gap between purchases, theres a risk that theyre going to lose interest and go off and do something else, buy a new iPod or do something different. So we need to have a frequency of involvement and that will lead you to lower price points. There may actually be some games, depending on the development costs, that would come in at below $49. I think that thats perfectly reasonable.
GI: What challenges do you see with marketing the Revolution since it isnt all about graphics, and it is about a remote control, and you want people to be wacky with it?
Harrison: I think that the most obvious one is that its hard to just show it to people, to say, watch this and youll understand. I think you have to get people to try it. For core gamers, thats not hard. Theyll try anything. Theyll walk up into a store to an interactive and theyll put their hands on it. For someone who is maybe a casual gamer or who is a lapsed gamer, theyre going to have to be enticed to do that. First of all, they dont generally go into the video game section of the store. They wont typically walk into a specialty store like a GameStop, so we have to go out and find them where they are and give them a reason to try it.
Were actually learning as we get ready for E3 about how can you present this thing in videos? You cant just show a video of the game footage because you cant just look at it and understand, even if its pretty. But you wouldnt understand how that relates to what the controller is doing to control the game. So theres got to be some other ways to do that. Im not sure if youll see the video once you get to Paris or not, but one of the things that they showed us when they came to Redmond was the video that was really well done in integrating how the player was using the controller and the response it was having with the game footage. That gave us at least some hope, as marketers that you dont have to go out and personally visit everyone in the United States. (laughs)
I think back to the challenge of marketing Virtual Boy. There was no way to do a TV commercial around that and have people understand what that experience was like. It was one of several problems with that product. (laughs) But it certainly was a marketing challenge. One of the things that you may see that we havent seen in commercials in a while is, you may see a lot more people in the commercials. People being sort of game players. It was almost a cliché when I first got to the industry in the early 90s that every commercial had to have a couple of smiling guys on the couch playing the game. Then we kind of got away from that as an industry and focused much more on the graphics and things. You might come back to a sense where you see much more humanity people involved and actually using the controller in the advertising and in the videos and things. But its fun that we have the internet and things available to us now because theres lots of speculation now that people are creating their own little videos and things and hypothesizing whats going to be possible. So we have a great grassroots opportunity here to spread the word that we didnt have four, five, 10 years ago.
Michael Beadle (Ubisoft): From our standpoint too, its interesting because we know that with Red Steel, that showcasing video and even screenshots well be putting in the magazine, is a challenge for us. Weve had some ideas that weve been running past Nintendo here because were in the same boat. What were trying to figure out is what is the best way to capture this in print? When you open it up, the first time you see this, whats that screen going to look like? Is it going to be hands showing how the controllers moving? I have my own theories about what were going to be able to do, but were looking for your feedback too.
GI: It was tricky when I was at TGS and I got the Revolution demonstration, and they were like, What do you think? First off I had to wrap my head around the whole thing. And I was like, I dont know how Im going to explain this to people because theyre going to see the picture of the freehand controller and theyre going to go, what? I actually got to use it and I know what its like, so Im cool with that but just explaining how it works is, I think, going to be a tricky job.
Harrison: Yeah, but itll be fun. You know, there are going to be a number of people who just buy this almost sight unseen theyre core fans who buy every hardware system that comes out. And itll be something of a Trojan horse for us because once it comes into a household, then people who havent played games for a while will get their hands on it. They wont have to go buy it to get their first experience. But well need to be on the road and were making plans to do that, to get out and get people who are unusual. Right now were about to launch a product on the DS, the Brain Age game, and theres no more an unusual product that Ive had to sell, a software product to try to have to go after people who are like 35, 40 plus years old and sampling.
We have to get to whole new places and try to encourage people to touch a piece of equipment that they normally wouldnt. So its good and it stretches us as marketers to be creative, but were also counting on people to spread the word themselves as they get involved. Thats where the value of the internet comes in. We get a group of people that we call our sages in there in our database from the number of products that theyve purchased that theyve registered, so theres some opportunity to use them as a sort of local market gurus because we cant ourselves reach all of the places that we need to. And we can use them to go out and demonstrate the uses for us as well.
GI: There have been people who have said that since its a remote, and everyone knows how a remote works, that this controller will be very easy for people to walk up and try just because it will be more inviting than a typical control pad. At the same time, too, if its someone whos like, Oh, thats the simplest remote, do you think that theyd be willing to spend $200 or $300 to get started? Video games are not an easy entry at any level you cant walk out without spending $200.
Harrison: Absolutely. I think that the key is going to be software. Ultimately, even for the core gamer, except for the people who buy every machine, its usually one piece of software that gets you over the hump to saying, Ive got to have that thing. Either just because Ive got to have it or everyones getting it. Thats the way that Nintendogs came in Japan and also in the US. It became a social phenomonon that you didnt want to admit that you didnt have it, so that suddenly propelled a whole different group of people to buy the DS in that case, women over the age of 25, in addition to pre-teen girls.
So the DS existed in Japan before Nintendogs released for three or four months, and had some good success at the launch, but it didnt break out until it got to software like that. So thats what we need to look at when we get to our Revolution lineup. What are our breakout things going to be that make people say, Ive just got to have it. Everyones talking about it and if Im not there
? If you think back to the launch of Game Boy back in 1989, thats what Tetris was. Such an incredibly simple game in its concept that became a social phenomenon that brought a whole lot of people into the industry that somehow drifted away over the course of the 90s when they felt that gaming was going in a direction that was more for the core audience than for themselves. So weve got to find it and then crank up the PR machine to make sure it gets attention.
GI: Nintendo has been historically, and not through any fault of your own, but its been for kids. Is that something that you guys are going to fight or embrace or is there any kind of change that you see with the Revolution changing that perception? Im not saying its real
Harrison: No, it is a real perception. But for us its somewhat mystifying because we look at the demographics of who has bought our hardware systems and its 40 percent over the age of 18 for GameCube and that type of thing. So its never been as complete as people make it seem or seem to believe. I think its in terms more of all family and approachable. The number of people who are in college fraternities and in their 20s and 30s playing Mario Kart is kind of astounding. But if you go out to talk with your friends, youre, oh yeah. I dont play Mario Kart, I play Need for Speed: Underground, or something. To us, were trying to make sure we dont hide from what we are and make sure were open to as many people as possible and present it that way. If theres a hardcore 17 or 18 year old that says, Im not interested in GameCube, I need Grand Theft Auto, we might not be able to convince them that we can be to their tastes. But theres a whole wide market on the outside of that that are under the age of 15 and over 25 that we think are yet to
and if you can get more people in the household involved in playing the games, we think that that will ultimately lead to greater purchases and sell software itself.
GI: So how does Red Steel figure into that equation?
Harrison: What it does is sort of allow us to broaden our appeal to the extent that we can. In the same way when we ultimately released GoldenEye for Nintendo 64, it anchored us with those people and gave confidence to the publishers that they could in fact sell games to that audience on our Nintendo 64. For us, were going to try to cast a net as wide as possible, but were not banking our success on getting the Grand Theft Auto fan and converting them to the Revolution.
GI: Just because were on the subject, did you call Rockstar? Did you ask them? Grand Theft Auto Revolution?
Harrison: I dont know if we had that specific conversation, but I know that weve been in discussions with them. But I was going to say, that that showed us that you never know where the next great game is coming from, so youve got to keep the aperture wide open. Theyve got a lot of visibility right now for not always some very good reasons, and we have struggles ourselves because we look at it and say, you know, we want to be known as a sort of approachable machine
But if you start to cordon off and say that these are things we wouldnt do, you limit your audience. Weve got a rating system and those things would probably never appear in Japan, as the audience just isnt interested. But over here, theres a role for M-rated games as well. (pause) Ill probably hear from Mr. Miyamoto on that.
GI: What does Miyamoto say when he sees games like that when theyre thinking of bringing over titles?
Harrison: I think that as an individual, his personality and his values and beliefs are reflected in his games. So I think that its just hard for him to figure out why people would find that interesting and rewarding. It just goes against everything he feels. I mean he is, I think, such a great creative genius because hes maintained his child-like perspective as hes grown up. And I also think that he believes to some degree that people take an easy way out, and as you know, every time we go to E3, every time you have a Grand Theft Auto, the following E3 theres 10 knockoffs. There was a corner you could stand on last year and if you turned around 360 degrees, you could see 15 knockoffs of Medal of Honor. And most of them never succeed.
But were an industry of a herd mentality and its the people who strike out and try to do something wholly new who generally have the most success. People who tend to follow, it doesnt tend to work out. So were fortunate to have Mr. Miyamoto who has an unbelievable ability to stretch himself in thinking in unusual ways and seeing things around him in life that cause him to move on and create games like Pikmin and things of that nature. Thats really exciting I think. Hes talked a lot about the sequelization of our industry being one of the risks that we have. And I think it is a risk, so were fortunate that Nintendo is financially stable enough and give him enough of a creative leash to go out and go far and wide in exploring these possibilities.
GI: Are there any possibilities with the Revolution with having games like the DS that you could be moving objects with the stylus on the DS that would move things in the Revolution game? Play something like "Fly Swat" where someone could be the bug and someone could be the swatter? Is there any interaction between those two systems that cool and different?
Harrison: Yeah. I havent seen any demonstrations of it yet. We did that as you know with the Game Boy and the GameCube, and I thought it had a lot of exciting possibilities. But it was never really picked up or embraced by the game developers, or at least we didnt see a lot of really great examples of why that was a good idea. So I think at this point, I dont even know if its technically possible. I dont think its a huge priority, at least I dont think youll see any examples of it at E3. I think that the focus is on Revolution games themselves, on the virtual console, which will take some work to get the games ready to roll out there as well as being one of the primary reasons to buy the console.
GI: And yet the DS and the Revolution both have Wi-Fi capabilities and it would, therefore, be easy to get them to talk to each other.
Harrison: They use the same backbone, so in terms of all the backroom setup and equipment, theyll use the same capability. I dont know. Whether thats just lacking a software idea thats practical or if there are really some technical limitations
GI: And how important do you think that online play will be for the Revolution?
Harrison: I think that it will be important; I dont think that it will be the primary reason to buy the Revolution. I think that the games that are offered for sale will be the primary reason to buy it, but the interest in the virtual console is very high. You know theres on one level a certain nostalgia there, I can go back and play these games that were released on prior systems. But it also has to ultimately go beyond that. Because Im not sure that someone whos 10, 12, 14 years old today frankly cares about what happened in 1985. How many kids today want to go back and watch Steamboat Willie? Its like, No, Id rather go watch something new. So it has to go beyond that, but I think that it opens up a world of possibilities that is an important element or aspect of the Revolution that has people wanting to get into it. But I think theyre going to want to look at the brand new games as the primary reason that they want to get involved.
GI: So for those new games do you think that theres going to be a lot of online support? Say, for Red Steel do you think that Ubisoft will be able to put in co-op or head to head play over the internet?
Harrison: It will be possible; I dont honestly know what theyre thinking about or how critical that is to the game. Those are things I havent really seen much of yet, as Ive had a limited view into the third party game development. But I think that one of the things weve talked about with DS is we finally unveiled the Wi-Fi connection because people were chiding us for years like, Oh, youre missing the boat on online gameplay. But it was for a couple of things.
First, we thought it was a cost barrier. Putting in an access fee or a subscription fee was a limitation. But more importantly almost we felt that the barrier of being able to find people that you were compatible with and could enjoy, we tried to break that down with the Nintendo DS. So for us thats really going to be a key factor. We look at it as being almost the primary selling factor for Xbox 360. They place a lot of effort against that. We think it probably falls somewhere in the middle. Its an interesting addition to the enjoyment of gameplay, but the core game has to be fun for itself as a starting point.
GI: This might be out of your realm, but you said that Red Steel has been worked on for a while now. Was Ubisoft one of the first companies to get the development kits? How many companies did you roll out the development kits to early? Youre up to 1,000 now, but at some point it must have been like everyone else, like Sony and Microsoft, who say, Okay. EA and someone else is going to get something.
Harrison: Yeah. You dont necessarily want to offend anybody, but I would say that Ubisoft was one of the first, if not the first, after our own internal groups had access to it. And you would say, Well, why is that? Theyre not necessarily the biggest publisher. Well, they came to us with a great idea. And I think thats what really got Mr. Iwata and Mr. Miyamoto really excited a great idea and they were aggressive. They approached us, I believe, last summer with this and asked to get underway. To us, that was the most important thing, I think. Its a relationship that weve had successes together, but it hasnt been the biggest publisher on the Nintendo platform necessarily. And it offered us an opportunity to get them on their way and show them that we really could be good partners.
GI: So well see Red Steel on the back of the box when you ship?
Harrison: (laughs) I think so, we havent gotten that far yet. The only game to buy! Certainly, though, in our marketing materials, were going to showcase a wide variety of games and this is a great example of one. So I think youre going to see this in many things that you do as we prepare demo discs for interactives and all of those kinds of things. I think youre going to see this Red Steel game involved in many aspects of our marketing.
GI: So at E3 this year, were going to be playing these on beta kits? Or how close are you to having finished hardware that people will have and be showing games on?
Harrison: Theyre pretty finished. So I think that in terms of the quality and capability of what youre going to see at E3, its exactly as the games could look when theyre finished. NCL is going to drag all of the equipment over, and they dont generally let the marketing people see whats going on. But there will be a large, large number of Revolution stations there at the show and a wide variety of games. We know that this is a critical show for us. E3s, by their nature, are hard to break out theres so much new stuff going on. This year in particular its going to be like the battle of the titans, launching consoles and, in the case of Microsoft, trying to relaunch their console, trying to reaffirm that their early stumble
that theyre back on track.
Theres going to be a lot of heat there and our job is to make sure that people really get it. The most important aspect being that people have to actually come and play it and try it. Were even recognizing that in our media briefing and our other programs that we do, that talking about it from the stage or showing it on the stage, even if we do some live demos, only gets you so far. The people in the audience have to get to the show floor and try it and try games.
GI: So will there be a girl chained to every single Revolution controller in the building?
Harrison: (laughs) I dont know about it being girl chained, but it will certainly be Nintendo Revolution employee chained.
Beadle: Is it public knowledge yet that you will have playable games at your booth?
Harrison: That well have playable games at the booth? No, I dont know if its public knowledge or not, but I think that its assumed. I think that people would assume if we didnt that
that environment, with all of that wireless equipment going on, were making sure that we understand exactly how its going to work. I think that its going to be a great show and theres always a lot of anticipation. But its always sort of easy to speculate, you know, What am I going to see at Sony? I know what Im going to get. Im going to get the same kinds of games and theyre going to look spectacular
But Revolution is kind of the unknown. Whats it really going to be like? In some ways, I think that that curiosity works to our advantage because people say, Whats this really about? Can they really show me that this is a better way to play a game?
GI: With the GameCube, you didnt have a Mario game at launch, usually Nintendo systems launch with a Mario game. Do you think that Revolution needs a Mario game to have a successful launch?
Harrison: I think that it needs a big, franchise game. Whether thats Mario or something else. But it does need a big, franchise game. The interesting thing about Smash Brothers was that it was a launch game, and it went on to sell huge numbers. But it didnt come out of the blocks the way that a typical Mario or Zelda game would not the huge peak and gigantic sales. It kind of grew slowly the way that GoldenEye did and once the word of mouth kicked in, it became almost an evergreen seller. But I do think that you need one or two things that rivet attention. Whats the real reason to buy this particular system? I think that our characters are going to be front and center in this.
GI: And between those launches and these launches, the platform game has kind of waned in the way of being a powerful motivator for people to buy the system. Do you think that thats a real perception out there, or do you think that Nintendo could put out a platformer and still sell 10 million Marios?
Harrison: I certainly think we can. I think its waned only because peoples attention tends to shift. Its like youve got Grand Theft Auto or Ridge Racer or something and they all go in that direction. The truth is that there are a lot of different people out there who like different kinds of games. Theres a reason why the platformers from Miyamoto have been so enduring. Theyre intuitive, but theyre challenging. They have lots of secrets and surprises that make you laugh and enjoy yourself and I just think that they have huge potential.
For us, its something that we do extremely well and were looking forward to those types of games to drive the system and the core gamers. Recently weve gone around and talked about this Blue Ocean strategy to try and expand the market and if you look at the sheer population of males under the age of 15, its actually going to start to decline. So if youre going to grow your business, youre going to have to go beyond that. But you also have to get those people who are 8 to 15 years old and get them started on a life of gaming. If we dont get them started on a life of gaming, theyre going to be doing something else when they get into their late teens and twenties. Its not automatic that theyre going to grow up thinking that video games are the thing that they have to do.
GI: How many games do you think you might have at launch?
Harrison: Its hard to say. I would say that it will probably be around 20. The reason I say its hard is that we havent even really seen how much it is that the licensees have. Our licensing group might have some idea what theyre working on, but were coming to E3 and you might see many more than that. And the question is, which of those will be good enough and ready enough to launch with? We feel like thats enough of a quantity to show some breadth and some depth.
GI: How many do you think will be from Nintendo?
Harrison: Thats hard to say. I would say, maybe, a third. Again, we do the same thing. We go to E3. We unveil the games. Then they sort of go back and look at them and say, Okay, how were they received? Any more work that needs to be done? Which ones are good enough, which ones should we work on further? So, its after E3 that the real nitty gritty comes and what the real launch lineup will look like.
