Gamasutra has posted an interview with Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto, Eiji Aonuma, and Kenichi Sugino asking several questions about violence in games, if games and art mix, features of the Nintendo DS, and more.
The interview originally appeared in the June/July issue of Game Developer magazine. You can check out the full interview here (registration required) or view a small excerpt below.
JM: In developing multiplayer games, Microsoft and Sony have both acquired an expertise in online gameplay. Instead, Nintendo has traditionally focused on in-person multiplayer experiences. The Wi-Fi-enabled DS seems to signal a transition for Nintendo, to integrate a broader range of players who are online. What accounts for this change?
SM: What we're looking at with the DS really stems from what we're doing with connectivity. We introduced connectivity to the Gamecube, so that if you also had a Game Boy Advance and a link cable, the gameplay we offered was very fun. But unfortunately, there were a lot of people who didn't have all these elements. So with the DS, we thought, what if we took all that and the fun elements we innovated with that, and put them all into one system from the get-go? So all you do is buy this one hardware system, and right out of the box you have all these connectivity options. Whether you've got one DS and one game pack, and your friends have their DSes, you'll be able to download the game from the game pack in one DS wirelessly to your friends and you can all play together wirelessly. So it's these kinds of "straight out of the box" and "nothing more to buy" ideas that we're excited about with the DS. It's because we're focusing on that that we can look at other options. It's like a jumping off point, where you can expand from there into the online realm. But for us, the main focus is that we want to provide people with this experience straight out of the box.