Reggie entered EGM's hot seat in the most recent issue. It seems he's not the only one kicking @$$ and taking names as EGM was able to get him to spill some names and information of Revolution launch titles. One of those names was Zelda.
Reggie spoke extensively with Electronic Gaming Monthly, revealing and confirming quite a bit of information, including hints about the Revolution controller. One of the things he drove home was that Revolution will launch with a large amount of Nintendo's heavy hitting franchises; he also mentioned that Nintendo is working heavily on several new franchises.
"As Mr. Iwata said, we're working on our next true Mario platformer for Revolution; we're working on our next Metroid, and we showed snippets of that work. And I'm actually meeting with Michael Kelbaugh to spend some time with him to understand the vision for our next Metroid Prime game. You'll see Zelda. You'll see Smash Bros. And Mr. Iwata certainly wants that to be a wireless Internet-enabled game because we know it would be so much fun for the core gamer.
So absolutely, for Revolution you will see all of our franchises, plus, we've gone on record to say that we are aggressively working on a number of new franchises. And that is something that has been a criticism of the past, you know, "Folks, are you milking Mario and doing too many Mario-type games?" We are hard at work at new franchises and we believe that's going to be critical to the launch of Revolution."
Reggie discussed a more mature Mario. One that would appeal to teens.
"Absolutely. That is the goal--[to make a Mario game that appeals to teens]. Now, have I seen it yet? No. Do I know that they're working on it? Yes. But that has certainly been a key driver and a key messaging within NCL is: what is that next generation? And I think it's very important to note that what our game fans are also beginning to see is our next generation of great developers."
Intriguing was Reggie's discussion of third party support and its relation to the Revolution's mystery controller. EGM asked him how conventional games like Splinter Cell will be ported considering the supposedly radical change to the way one perceives and experiences games. He had this to say:
"The thing that I always find surprising, and certainly in the last year I've had wonderful opportunities to spend quality time with a number of our key third-party publishers, is when you sit down and share the innovation with them, just how excited they get. I saw it firsthand with DS; we're seeing it now with Revolution. The fact that you and your fans haven't seen the controller doesn't mean that no one else has.
I mean, again, and Mr. Iwata did this during his presentation on Tuesdayif you just think about it, we're going to have the ability through wireless internet to download all of your great games from NES, SNES, N64. Think about it: Each of those controllers were different. How are you gonna play? That captured some the imagination of what our controller needs to be able to do, and certainly as you get into the meat of that type of innovation with the developers, their eyes truly light up because they start to imagine what's possible with that type of configuration, which is vastly different than a sheer horsepower type of game."
There you have, presumably, confirmation that third parties have seen the controller and at least have an idea of what they might bring to Revolution. Also presumably confirmed is that the Revolution controller must in some way provide conventional functionality in order to play classic titles on the NES and beyond.
On Revolution pricing, Reggie confirmed that it will in fact be cheaper than competing consoles, but at the expense of, what he calls, "fluff."
"We have to assume that from a pricing standpoint, we will be substantially lower than the competition, because we don't have all of that added fluff that a gamer, frankly, doesn'tit's not core to gaming. Now, we'll see what happens when their pricing is announced and when ours is, but just as a rational businessperson, it leads you down that path."
He also blasted Sony's current and past approaches at making a multi-tasking machine:
"What I can tell you is the other time that Sony tried [making an all-purpose console], it failed miserably. And it's called the PSX. So I think that the consumer will vote with their dollar when everything comes out and everything is known. We do believe a center-of-the-plate gaming strategy is going to make sense in this marketplace. Especially when it's supported with fantastic software."
He reiterated online strategy for DS and Revolution. He said Nintendo hopes to bring more gamers into the online gaming community with the DS, and wants to mirror that strategy of free, accessible online-gaming with the Revolution.
"As we get into the Internet space, the first way we're going to get there, obviously, is with Nintendo DS, which is going to be having wireless-enabled games for this holiday season. So principles that we're applying for DS are the same principles we're going to apply for Revolution, which is, we want to make it easy and included for the consumer. We want our games to be, if you will, optimized for online play. We want it to be free, so that there are no cost barriers, but we want it to be an overall fun experience so that there's also no what I call experience barriers.
By doing all that, we believe we can drive up our participation rate of online play to be well in excess of about the 15 percent you see today. And the 15 percent comes from a number of industry sources, but if you think about it, 15 out of every 100 consumers who buy an online game actually go and play it online. That's pretty small. Versus what we want to see, for example, with Mario Kart, is we want to see 80, 90, 95, near 100 percent of folks who actually enjoy the experience so much, who have access to the experience, to go do it online.
That, philosophically, is quite different than what our competitors do. There's going to be no subscription fee; we're not looking at this as a profit-driven program. We're looking at it as a way to bring more enjoyment and satisfaction to the game. And we think with what we're doing on Kart, what we're going to be doing on Animal Crossing, what we're going to be doing on future Revolution wireless Internet games, we think that's a fundamentally different model than what's being done today."
Reggie hinted that Nintendo and retailers are excited about Game Boy Micro's pricing; he suggested that it will be the hit of this year's holiday season as DS was last year.
"And we think [the accessibility and wide aesthetic appeal of the GBM] is a huge proposition, and again, I have to tell you: The retailers have been all over it. You know, they know their consumers about as well as we do, and the belief is that it's going to be the hot Christmas item this year. Especially when we announce the pricing."
Finally, Reggie indicated that the DS could be hitting retailers in some new colors during the coming months, and perhaps some new "innovation."
"The DS is going to be driven [this year] by Mario Kart. It's going to be driven by Metroid Prime: Hunters. It's going to be driven by Nintendogs. Maybe some new colors. Maybe some other pieces of innovation that we do. We're going to continue to drive activity on that piece of our business as well. We will have initiatives for Cube, led by Zelda; we're going to have initiatives for [Game Boy]; we're going to have initiatives for DS; and that's our plan."
Sexiest controller ever?
