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GDC 2007: Gettin Shiggy wit it photo

Miyamoto is a charming man, which is not a huge surprise. This morning in his GDC keynote, he chose the tradtional route of outlining Nintendo's corporate focus as well as his own for the past, present and future. While many of the Wii's haters are going to blow off this keynote as unimportant, I think there were some things said that were more essential than we realize in the general scheme of things.


Shig starts at the beginning, showing us some Donkey Kong pics and reminding us about where he got started. He explained in 2004, different kinds of games had hit the limelight and developers felt great pressure to follow the trend of where games were going to keep up. However, this vision was not the same as Nintendo's vision, and its at this point that he explains to us what exactly that is.

"The Nintendo Difference", as Miyamoto calls it, is made up of several key points that affect a person's interest in a game. The clever "Wife-o-Meter", a gauge of how much Miyamoto's wife likes a game or not, seems to be to be a general analogy for how much Nintendo is concerned with including women in the gaming universe. He is one of the only developers in the market so far to stress that he cares about the concept of combining family and gaming rather than alienating them and accepting gaming and relationships will always clash. For this writer, that concept is more important than perfect graphics.

In discussing Nintendo's devotion to entertainment, Miyamoto stresses that while he has been a part of all controller design since the NES, all projects at Nintendo are a group collaboration. It strikes me as impressive that while many companies find it more than worthwhile to focus attention on single designers, Nintendo prefers a team aspect. In general this is an approach that not only unites people, but also their ideas. Even in the design of the Wiimote and all controllers before it, Nintendo  continues to press the point that accessibility to all players, young and old, is key.

Bottom line? The most important thought expressed here was that while the next gen era of gaming is a natural evolvement, it does not appeal to every player. As a gamer who is often attracted to old games before new, I can completely understand and agree with that. Nintendo will have its haters, as every system does. However, they thrill me in their desire to dedicate their vision to the human experience of having fun and including everyone. That's more courage than I've seen from a lot of this industry, and I applaud it.








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Colette Bennett is a Destructoid features editor from New Orleans, Louisiana. She is also a founding member of Destructoid's sister sites Tomopop, a toy lover's blog and Japanator, our anime site. Likes Nintendo DS, NES, Silent Hill series, Rhythm games, RPGs Meet the rest of the team



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11 comments | showing # 1 to 11
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DJDuffy 's Avatar - Comment posted on 03/08/2007 15:30
DJDuffy
I'm not all that surprised that they revealed some of their key concepts, b/c frankly, Sony and Microsoft are not really going in the same direction at all. I agree that being inclusive to everyone and soon-to-be-gamers is a really important thing.
Pistolaero's Avatar - Comment posted on 03/08/2007 15:32
Pistolaero
I agree. I am just hoping they don't forget us gamers who were here before the Wii. I have faith they can pull it off either way, otherwise I wouldn't have bought the Wii in the first place.
teknohed's Avatar - Comment posted on 03/08/2007 15:33
teknohed
I was hoping he would announce an end to friend codes...other than that seemed like a nice introspective presentation...a good look into the man's methods.
phinehas's Avatar - Comment posted on 03/08/2007 15:34
phinehas
Well said - people will blow this keynote off as unimportant, but I agree it says more than meets the ear at first listen.
rdaneel72's Avatar - Comment posted on 03/08/2007 15:34
rdaneel72
Well said.

A refreshingly different perspective from the usual gang of hooligans who troll this site.
scrap's Avatar - Comment posted on 03/08/2007 15:48
scrap
w3rd! I just saw pics my brother took of my parents playing Wii back home with the family. They NEVER play video games! It was awe inspiring. The look of joy on their faces was priceless.
's Avatar - Comment posted on 03/08/2007 16:00
Neil
Here's the list of Upcoming Wii games that we all have to look forward to. Courtesy of CVG via Nintendo:

* Super Paper Mario (Nintendo) - April 9
* Prince of Persia Rival Swords (Ubisoft) - April
* Bust-A-Move Bash (Majesco) - April
* Bioncle Heroes (Eidos) - April
* Mortal Kombat: Armageddon (Midway) - May 15
* Mario Party 8 (Nintendo) - May 29
* Tamagotchi Party On (Namco Bandai) - May
* Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean at World's End (Disney Interactive) - May
* Escape from Bug Island (Eidos) - May
* Spider-Man The Movie 3 (Activision) - May
* Big Brain Academy (Nintendo) - June 11
* Pokemon Battle Revolution (Nintendo) - June 25
* Cosmic Family (Ubisoft) - June
* Heatseeker (Codemasters) - Spring
* Legend of the Dragon (American Game Factory) - Q2
* Shrek the Third (Activision) - Summer
* Transformers the Game (Activision) - Summer


:(
bhive01's Avatar - Comment posted on 03/08/2007 16:48
bhive01
Out of that list I see only a few I have interest in:

Super Paper Mario
Prince of Persia
Mario Party
Pokemon

Of those, only Super Paper Mario is a must buy in my mind.

Movie based games generally stink unless you're too young to realize how to control it and the characters on the screen are more important than the actual game.
Aaron Mxy Yost's Avatar - Comment posted on 03/08/2007 22:19
Aaron Mxy Yost
Another thing he mentioned in the speech that a lot of people are overlooking is not being afraid to delay your games if it's just not fun or working right. If more publishers listened to that advice, we'd have a lot more 8-9 rated games and fewer 5-6 rated ones.
brad drac's Avatar - Comment posted on 03/09/2007 11:27
brad drac
Good writeup colette. I'm finding it pretty annoying how everyone is bitching about how there was nothing new in miyamoto's keynote, despite the fact that it wasn't a press conference, and nintendo had the decency to explicitly state they weren't giving any new information. Miyamoto is the most important person in gaming, and I for one found his insights to be quite interesting.
Oni's Avatar - Comment posted on 03/09/2007 13:21
Oni
IIRC, they couldn't release any new information due to a trading of stocks or something. They weren't allowed to say anything that could change the price of their stocks significantly.
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