LOS ANGELES -- Will Nintendo's new Wii U compete with the iPad as much as other game consoles, and will its Miiverse social network challenge Facebook?
And can the console win over hard-core gamers without "Call of Duty" -- or could the blockbuster action game be coming to the Wii U after all?
Those are some of the question I pitched at E3 to Scott Moffitt, the guy in charge of selling and marketing Nintendo hardware and games.
Moffitt joined Nintendo of America as executive vice president of sales and marketing last year. Earlier he was at PepsiCo and Henkel Consumer Goods, handling brands like Mountain Dew, Right Guard and Dial.
Nintendo of America is based in Redmond, but Moffitt works from its marketing office in Redwood City, Calif.
Here are edited excerpts of our chat:
Q: Why is there no Wii U pricing information yet? Is it because you want another round of coverage when the price is announced, or have you not decided the price yet?
A: It's not that we haven't settled it. As is typical with past Nintendo console and hardware launches, we tend to try to announce the pricing and exact SKU information closer to launch. What we've said is the Wii U will be launching this holiday period and we'll make that kind of information available as we get closer to launch.
Q: How does Nintendo define the holiday season?
A: Holiday season really begins October, November, December, but of course the bulk of the sales begin Black Friday weekend, right after Thanksgiving.
Q: Do you see consumers this Christmas choosing between a $399 iPad and a Wii U, or will the Wii U be more head-to-head with other consoles?
A: I believe the competitive consideration set would include our friends from Microsoft and Sony more so than iPad devices. There's just limited gaming you can do on those devices if you really are a gamer that cares for deep, immersive gaming experiences with true button control.
So I do believe our true competition is the other consoles. But I'd say what we're offering is quite different and quite revolutionary so I think we'll compete with ourselves a bit.
Q: Are your primary buyers going to be Wii owners upgrading?
A: I think your early buyers are people who love early technology. And that probably is very broadly defined as active gamers that really want the newest, latest, greatest technology in gaming and are very intrigued by the second screen controller, which we call the Wii U, and all the interesting things it enables in home entertainment.
A: I think your early buyers are people who love early technology. And that probably is very broadly defined as active gamers that really want the newest, latest, greatest technology in gaming and are very intrigued by the second screen controller, which we call the Wii U, and all the interesting things it enables in home entertainment.
Q: So do you expect a slower build-up with mainstream consumers?
A: No, I think there will be a lot of current Nintendo fans also in that early rush to wait in lines and buy the Wii U. So I think current Nintendo fans that love our franchises and love playing Mario games they know they can only play on our systems will be lining up to buy it. Certainly Wii owners will be intrigued by what this has to offer as well.
Q: Your peers at Sony have told me they saw the PlayStation 3 as the upgrade for Wii owners. What will Wii U buyers be upgrading from?
A: The Wii U is intended for a broad audience. Nintendo's always been about expanding the gaming audience. The potential buyers are very broad. As we showed with Wii, when you bring interesting, new types of gaming the appeal can be quite broad. Once again, we're going to be able to transform the gaming experience, but it goes far beyond gaming. With Wii U there are three pillars to what Wii U offers.
Certainly the integrated, second-screen controller transforms the way people play games. It will transform the way they connect with each other, with Miiverse. It will also transform the way they experience entertainment in the home. It's connected automatically to the internet, to your game console and you have the controller. That seamless connection creates lots of interesting entertainment possibilities as well as game possibilities.
Q: You have some new games for hard-core gamers but I didn't see "Call of Duty" or "Battlefield" for the Wii U. Can you get the core gamer if you don't have those titles on there?
A: E3 for us is all about games. We're focusing on that first pillar of the three pillars of what E3 can offer. Over 20 games were unveiled. That's a pretty broad lineup. But I can assure you even more games will be coming during the launch period so if there's a favorite game that gamers like, I think there's a good chance it will be coming to the platform. .... I would expect that gamers will see an immense array of first- and third-party content at launch.
Q: That's interesting. You're coming after the core strongly during what's going to be a big core season, with big titles coming out and the other consoles positioned for core gamers. Will most of your sales be to the family audience?
A: I wouldn't say that. I think Wii U is intended to reach a very broad audience. There's a lot that a core gamer will really appreciate in the system when they get into it and they see a game like "Batman Arkham City.
Yes, it's a game that was released last year but when you see how you can play it differently and what new kinds of experiences are available when you play it on the Wii U game pad. It really opens up and we think, could make it the preferred way to play some of those core games.
Q: How are you going handle parental and family safety issues around the Miiverse social network? Will there be age restrictions on its use?
A: There will be traditional parental family controls, as you'd expect with that. The Miiverse, we really haven't talked much about that yet, but it's a really interesting idea that will transform social connections both within game play and beyond game play with broader entertainment.
When you power up your system, you'll see this Mii plaza with not only your Mii but also the Miis of your friends and your neighbors and other people you're gaming with, but other people from your region or across the world. You'll see where they're congregating, which indicates their preferences for gaming or other entertainment.... We think it will enable fun interaction with households across the country and with gamers of all abilities.
Q: Will it be open to players under 13 years old?
A: It's open to gamers of all ages but you can set your parental controls, your parental restrictions, as you like.
Q: Will there be any bridges between Miiverse and say Facebook or Twitter?
A: We haven't announced anything in that area yet.
Q: Will you do more things wth the network and online services, for instance online storage and photo sharing?
A: We haven't announced any of those capabilities yet, but I think you're imagining several possibilities that have already been thought about.
We've also thought about how would you connect this new Nintendo network with your 3DS, your handheld gaming system, so you could certainly imagine lots of ways to connected all your gaming devices and enable some of the functions you're talking about. But that's not ready, that's not going to be announced at launch.
Q: Will the Miiverse become the primary way people connect online with friends and family, or is it intended to supplement other networks and message systems?
A: It's not meant to replace things people are doing on Facebook or other things. It's really not a competitor for those. It's a game-centered network. So it's meant to be a place to share gaming and entertainment content so it really inverts what Facebook does.
Facebook is a broad social network, it has a gaming aspect to it. This starts with gaming and enables some of the communication and interaction that consumers have become accustomed to with these other social networks.
Q: How will you benefit from having pole position in the next generation of game consoles?
A: I think Nintendo tends to launch new consoles when the technology and when the imagination is there to create something new that enables a richer and more interesting game experience. We don't have a set clock when we want a new console or a new piece of hardware to come out.
When we feel we have something that can elevate game play and transform the experience, that's when we'll bring it out. But certainly I would imagine being first will influence consoles that come from other manufacturers.
E3: Console Games Only Need Attend
After covering the E3 2012 conference this week, I see that, ultimately, E3 doesn’t really represent today’s broad swath of gaming. Traditional, turn-based war games are completely absent from the mix in Los Angeles, so breakthrough titles similar to last year’s Unity of Command are missing in action.
A cow from the game Harvest Moon: A New BeginningNowhere to be seen are companies like Playdek and Days of Wonder, which are selling boatloads of electronic versions of board games on tablets. If it doesn’t run on a console made by the Nintendo-Sony-Microsoft trinity, it’s hard to find at E3. PC games get some love, mostly on the massively multiplayer side, but for the most part, E3 is still a console show.
The disparity is shown in E3's South Hall. One of the big landmarks at one end is a giant inflatable cow. The cow is there to bring people to look at Harvest Moon: A New Beginning [PDF], the latest iteration of the iconic farming simulator that launched a legion of imitators, including Zynga’s FarmVille.
Borderlands 2At the other end is a huge sculpture of four heavily armed characters from Gearbox’s upcoming Borderlands 2, a violent first-person shooter set on another planet with post-apocalyptic trappings.
Those E3 bookends illustrate the diversity of the authors and audiences for games in the 21st century. Epic Games showed the latest iteration of its Unreal Engine behind closed doors--the game engine that is behind hugely successful AAA titles like Gears of War 2and Mass Effect 3.
In a small booth several hundred yards away, dice.pl (not to be confused with EA studio DICE, who makes Battlefield 3) showed an electronic die that allows you to roll physical dice to generate results in a tablet or PC game title.
Gaming has seeped into the culture as a whole, but as it becomes more tightly woven into the fabric of everyday life, it also becomes highly fragmented. The audience for Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 is mostly different from people who play the Harvest Moon games.
Even if you just count first-person shooter games, E3 would lead you to believe that only big budget military shooters existed. As PCWorld's Alex Wawro noted in his analysis on Virtual Violence Fatigueat E3, most of the media, at least, seemed to be tired of these games, most of which are hard to distinguish from each other. Yet Valve is readying CounterStrike: Global Ops, a multiplayer shooter that will retail for just $15--and that wasn’t shown at E3.
And for all the big budget RPGs that get press, like Elder Scrolls Online, games like Shadowrun fromHarebrained Schemes may end up being far better titles.
So if you’re considering the game you’d like to play next, take a little time to dig around. Don’t just go for the big games that make a big splashes at E3. There are great games out there, waiting to be discovered.
MIYAMOTOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOo
E3: Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto talks bringing 'The Legend of Zelda' to the Wii U
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The Wii U may not have made as big an impact as Nintendo would have hoped, but the company remains the big kahuna in the videogame world, and there is no bigger name in the world of Nintendo than Shigeru Miyamoto, a.k.a. The Man Who Created Mario and Zelda. While Miyamoto was at E3 this year to show off the latest game from his other franchise, Pikmin 3, we could not help but ask him about the possibility of a new The Legend of Zelda title for this system, as well as what potential he sees in the Wii U for attracting hardcore gamers. Check out what he had to say (through a translator) below:
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How long have you been in development on Pikmin 3 for the Wii U?
SHIGERU MIYAMOTO: Well Pikmin 3 itself I’ve been working on with a very, very small team for going on about five years now doing a variety of experiments, but as far as Pikmin 3 on Wii U we started that a little bit less than two years ago.
SHIGERU MIYAMOTO: Well Pikmin 3 itself I’ve been working on with a very, very small team for going on about five years now doing a variety of experiments, but as far as Pikmin 3 on Wii U we started that a little bit less than two years ago.
What was it about the Wii U that made you realize that you wanted to make sure thatPikmin 3 came out on the Wii U and not the Wii?
It’s primarily because the processing power advanced. Pikmin is a real-time strategy game, a game where you want to have a broad view of the world so that you can figure out your strategies. Previously when the camera was pulled out that far, you couldn’t see the individual movements of the Pikmin, and that always was something that caused stress for me because I really want people to be able to see the characters. So when we knew that we were going to do the HD system [on the] Wii U, we wanted to make sure to take advantage of the HD functionality because with that and even with the pulled out camera you can still see the detailed characteristics of the individual Pikmin.
It’s primarily because the processing power advanced. Pikmin is a real-time strategy game, a game where you want to have a broad view of the world so that you can figure out your strategies. Previously when the camera was pulled out that far, you couldn’t see the individual movements of the Pikmin, and that always was something that caused stress for me because I really want people to be able to see the characters. So when we knew that we were going to do the HD system [on the] Wii U, we wanted to make sure to take advantage of the HD functionality because with that and even with the pulled out camera you can still see the detailed characteristics of the individual Pikmin.
We know there’s a new Mario game coming for the Wii U, New Super Mario Bros. U. Last year when the Wii U was first introduced, a standalone Zelda battle scene was created to showcase the system’s high-definition graphics. What about the Wii U intrigues you for what you could do in a Zelda game?
Obviously we stared that experiment last year and used that to sort of showcase some of the HD visuals. And obviously when you look at that, you do get a positive reaction to how simply having the HD visuals in a Zelda game can really make the game look wonderful and give it sort of a high-quality feel. But one thing that’s interesting is we’re seeing how the way that tastes are broadening in video games and you have some people who prefer more casual experiences, and you have some people who prefer sort of those more in-depth experiences. Obviously, as a company that’s been making games for a very long time, we tend to be more on the deeper, longer game side of things. But really what we continue to ask ourselves as we have over the years is, “What is the most important element of Zelda if we were to try to make a Zelda game that a lot of people can play?” So we have a number of different experiments going on, and [when] we decide that we’ve found the right one of those to really help bring Zelda to a very big audience, then we’ll be happy to announce it.
Obviously we stared that experiment last year and used that to sort of showcase some of the HD visuals. And obviously when you look at that, you do get a positive reaction to how simply having the HD visuals in a Zelda game can really make the game look wonderful and give it sort of a high-quality feel. But one thing that’s interesting is we’re seeing how the way that tastes are broadening in video games and you have some people who prefer more casual experiences, and you have some people who prefer sort of those more in-depth experiences. Obviously, as a company that’s been making games for a very long time, we tend to be more on the deeper, longer game side of things. But really what we continue to ask ourselves as we have over the years is, “What is the most important element of Zelda if we were to try to make a Zelda game that a lot of people can play?” So we have a number of different experiments going on, and [when] we decide that we’ve found the right one of those to really help bring Zelda to a very big audience, then we’ll be happy to announce it.
So you’re sort of in the R&D stage?
Yeah. With the last game, Skyward Sword, that was a game where you had motion control to use your weapons and a lot of different items, and I thought that was a lot of fun, but there were some people who weren’t able to do that or didn’t like it as much and stopped playing partway through it. So we’re in the phase where we’re looking back at what’s worked very well and what has been missing and how can we evolve it further.
Yeah. With the last game, Skyward Sword, that was a game where you had motion control to use your weapons and a lot of different items, and I thought that was a lot of fun, but there were some people who weren’t able to do that or didn’t like it as much and stopped playing partway through it. So we’re in the phase where we’re looking back at what’s worked very well and what has been missing and how can we evolve it further.
I do think of some other Zelda games where you’d play a song or something and a screen would come up and you’d have to match a certain pattern within the song to advance in the game. It seems like the touchscreen on the GamePad does sort of offer interesting ways of incorporating that element of the Zelda experience into a Wii U game.
Maybe I’ll take that idea. [Laughs]
Maybe I’ll take that idea. [Laughs]
One of the things that is very clear with the way that Nintendo has been presenting the Wii U is that there’s a renewed investment in third-party publishers and getting more hardcore gamers to play on a Nintendo system. What are you most looking forward to seeing within that effort?
So the thing that we’ve tried to talk about at E3, and this is something that we’ve tried to do with the original Wii hardware, was we wanted games to grow beyond the framework that they’ve been limited by up until now. We tried to do this with Wii, and we were able to do it in some ways, but we weren’t able to do it in other ways. And with Wii U, what we determined was in order for games to grow in new ways, they can’t be totally dependent on the TV anymore, and that’s why we’ve added this additional screen. And as I mentioned today, my goal is that this is the screen that people will go to when they first come into the living room. What I mean by that is that this will become sort of their entry point for whatever content it is they’re experiencing on the TV, whether it’s social, whether it’s TV, whether it’s something like a YouTube video, and, of course, whether it’s games. The goal is that we want the Wii U system to be something that the entire family engages with, [so] it needs to have something for every individual in the family. And so of course in a system like this, it’s important to have games that the core gamer will play. It’s important to have games that the family will play together. It’s important to have kind of unique independent ideas as well. So to me, the message is really that this is a system that no matter what your interests — be assured that there will be something for you. And I think that’s what we’re trying to tell people this week.
So the thing that we’ve tried to talk about at E3, and this is something that we’ve tried to do with the original Wii hardware, was we wanted games to grow beyond the framework that they’ve been limited by up until now. We tried to do this with Wii, and we were able to do it in some ways, but we weren’t able to do it in other ways. And with Wii U, what we determined was in order for games to grow in new ways, they can’t be totally dependent on the TV anymore, and that’s why we’ve added this additional screen. And as I mentioned today, my goal is that this is the screen that people will go to when they first come into the living room. What I mean by that is that this will become sort of their entry point for whatever content it is they’re experiencing on the TV, whether it’s social, whether it’s TV, whether it’s something like a YouTube video, and, of course, whether it’s games. The goal is that we want the Wii U system to be something that the entire family engages with, [so] it needs to have something for every individual in the family. And so of course in a system like this, it’s important to have games that the core gamer will play. It’s important to have games that the family will play together. It’s important to have kind of unique independent ideas as well. So to me, the message is really that this is a system that no matter what your interests — be assured that there will be something for you. And I think that’s what we’re trying to tell people this week.
Entertainment Weekly is a pop-culture publication, and I’m wondering what outside of the gaming world in the world of pop culture — of movies, television, music, books — is most exciting you right now?
I’ve actually been watching a lot of Japanese TV shows lately, TV dramas. There’s been a period where Japanese television wasn’t very interesting, but what we’ve seen over the last few years is there’s been quite a bit of Japanese television taking Japanese manga and bringing them into a television series or a movie. The idea that you have this one manga artist or manga writer who’s working alone and is sort of creating whatever it is that they want to create and then being able to see that come from those manga pages into TV or a movie has been pretty interesting.
I’ve actually been watching a lot of Japanese TV shows lately, TV dramas. There’s been a period where Japanese television wasn’t very interesting, but what we’ve seen over the last few years is there’s been quite a bit of Japanese television taking Japanese manga and bringing them into a television series or a movie. The idea that you have this one manga artist or manga writer who’s working alone and is sort of creating whatever it is that they want to create and then being able to see that come from those manga pages into TV or a movie has been pretty interesting.
I ask because most people when they take a break from their lives, they often do it by playing a game, so I’m wondering because you live games, what do you do to take a break from them?
Mostly I just practice my guitar. [Laughs] I’ll listen to music, and if I hear an interesting phrase being performed, then I immediately start thinking, “Oh man, I wonder how they did that.” So I’ll immediately grab my guitar, and sometimes I’ll even get my Nintendo 3DS and record it and then adjust the speed and slow it down and try to figure out maybe how they did that. I’m not the kind of person that can pick up and play an electric guitar with all sorts of effects on it, so I get down to the stripped down sound of the guitar and try to have fun figuring out those melodies.
Mostly I just practice my guitar. [Laughs] I’ll listen to music, and if I hear an interesting phrase being performed, then I immediately start thinking, “Oh man, I wonder how they did that.” So I’ll immediately grab my guitar, and sometimes I’ll even get my Nintendo 3DS and record it and then adjust the speed and slow it down and try to figure out maybe how they did that. I’m not the kind of person that can pick up and play an electric guitar with all sorts of effects on it, so I get down to the stripped down sound of the guitar and try to have fun figuring out those melodies.
