Game Informer Magazine sat down for a lengthy pre-E3 interview with George Harrison, Nintendo of America's senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications. The interview can be read in full within the Game Informer Magazine on sale now or through a new section on the magazine's website.
Harrison responded to a variety of topics ranging from Nintendo's Revolution plans to the company's E3 expectations. Some of the more significant highlights are below.
Harrison began by sharing a story, reflecting back on why Nintendo chose its current route of promoting intuitive control. During the SNES generation, Nintendo conducted focus groups to see why the Sega Genesis was performing so well. Nintendo was convinced its games were better, however the two consoles competed neck and neck for market share. Harrison described how the study went: "We went into the focus groups and we would say, "They don't have as many colors, their system can't produce as many colors as we can, their controller doesn't have as many buttons as we do..." And the consumers would eventually say to us, "You know, to be honest, I'm really not that good and the fact that I can press one button and be successful with Sonic, I like that."
This made a light bulb turn on in Nintendo's head. They realized that people simply weren't happy with complicated controls. Harrison shares another similar story: "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, I've 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 can't 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 don't want it to be inordinately complicated."
These experiences helped to inspire the Revolution controller, replacing the traditional buttons with natural movements that even grandma can understand. However, there still lacks games for grandma. Indeed, Harrison admits this new control has introduced new challenges for developers. Shigeru Miyamoto told Harrison in January that even within Nintendo, it has been difficult to get people to think differently. Miyamoto feels that young people come to Nintendo as fans of Mario, Zelda and other games they grew up playing. As a result, its been hard for employees to remove those preconceptions of what a game should be. Nintendo recently re-organized its employees into small groups in an effort to drum up new ideas that appeal to these different audiences.
Harrison admits, "These are mostly guys under the age of thirty-five, you know 20-35; for them to put themselves into 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, that's kind of a tough challenge. But that's what we have to do."
Nintendo is also trying to get the third-party development community involved on the Revolution console. Nintendo is making an honest effort to provide them with the proper tools. More than 1,000 development kits have already been distributed. "One of the lessons we tried to learn from GameCube was that we kept things too close," Harrison admits. "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."
Harrison admits that Nintendo has been a closed company, opting to keep third-party developers in the dark about its plans. This has led to small support early in the life-cycle for new systems, such as the Nintendo 64 which launched with only two games, both of which were created by Nintendo. Harrison acknowledges a reversal of strategy, "For Revolution, that was a clear strategy change — get them involved early and you're 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."
The next big game can come from anywhere, after all. It was impossible to predict five years ago that a garden-variety PC game would go on to become the most successful game series ever released. "One thing that we certainly learned from PlayStation 2's success was that you never know where the next hit game is going to come from," he said. "Grand Theft Auto had been out there, I think, as a PC game that's okay, not great. But suddenly it just rocketed and carried the PlayStation 2 along."
In fact, Rockstar, developer of Grand Theft Auto, has already been contacted by Nintendo. He says frankly, "They've 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 wouldn't do, you limit your audience. We've got a rating system and those things would probably never appear in Japan, as the audience just isn't interested. But over here, there's a role for M-rated games as well."
This bodes well for the launch of the Nintendo Revolution later this year. Ubisoft's Red Steel has already been confirmed as a launch title. In addition, Harrison expects another 20 more games available on day one, a third of which will be from Nintendo itself. He ponders the type of game Nintendo needs for launch saying, "I think that it needs a big, franchise game. Whether that's Mario or something else. But it does need a big, franchise game."
Nintendo is aiming for a worldwide launch, introduced in regions by perhaps only days or weeks of one another. Harrison stresses the importance of making a good impression worldwide and particularly in Japan. He notes, "Clearly, for us, the Japanese market might be the most important — it's the home market, it's the chance to reset the clock to the main competitor, which is Sony, the only competitor. So they need to make a good impression."
In the meantime, Harrison points to the Electronic Entertainment Expo beginning May 9 for more information on the Revolution. He suspects Revolution games will be featured throughout the show floor, in Nintendo's booth as well as third-party publishers. "We tend to live in our own world a little bit, maybe a Nintendo disease, but our booth is five percent of the show floor," he said. "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 they're doing as well."
E3 will be both a time to celebrate but also a moment to see what the competition is up to. Sony's PlayStation 3 will also be making its inaugural splash on the show floor. With the company's recent financial trouble as well as the delay of its console, many are worried about the future prospects for the company. "You hate to say that the future of Sony rests on this [the PlayStation 3], but for the last several years the game division has been their strength and there's no more risky time than transition," Harrison said. "So I think they've got their own challenges to worry about. I think they're oddly very focused on Microsoft and feeling very challenged by Microsoft."
Nintendo has challenges in the home console realm as well as in the portable arena. Harrison was questioned about where he sees the Game Boy brand going in the future. "It's still a very vibrant business for us," he confirmed. "Right now it's sort of our entry level system, price at $79, it's got the huge library of games. Certainly this year a lot of publishers are using Game Boy as a way to viably make some money while they're going through this transition because they know they can publish games there that sell. Game Boy itself is one of the biggest brands that has been created in the last 15 years."
Harrison said Nintendo is adamant about retaining the Game Boy brand. "We're not going to let that just slip away," he said. "This year our focus is on introducing DS Lite. What kinds of ideas Mr. Iwata has for Game Boy, we'll just have to wait and see as we get into 2007."
And with that we've highlighted the more interesting comments from Harrison. Be sure to check out Game Informer for the complete and uncut transcript.