Iwata Interviews Wii Designers

Leading up to the big Wii press conference later this week, Nintendo themselves conducted an interview session in which company president Satoru Iwata interviewed the designers of the Wii console.

Iwata began by asking head of Wii development Genyou Takeda to comment on the creation of the controller. “The DS had a big influence,” responded Takeda. “When making the Wii controller, the Nintendo DS concept was already around. We kept in mind how we could follow the DS’s path. As many people had been predicting, we even considered including a touch panel on the controller and even considered something that’s like a PC mouse or track pad in that can be used as a pointing device.”

The interview continued by speaking about the early stages of the Wii controller. “When developing a game machine, you need an interface between the human and machine. Years back, we created over ten teams of three people, and had them freely consider plans for including special controllers or peripherals with GameCube software. From this project came things like the Donkey Konga tarucon controller and the Dance Dance Revolution with Mario mat controller, but they also had numerous ideas and plans that were used for the Wii controller.”

When asked about his role in the development of the controller, Akio Ilkeda, who previously worked on games like Pocket Pikachu and Koro Koro Kirby, responded by saying the controller was “Simple” and “Pleasant.” He believes the main concepts behind the Wii console are simplicity and the joy of playing.

Like Takeda, Ikeda was influenced by the DS. “Personally speaking, when my parents had an interest in the DS, I was surprised. It seems that they first began to have interest when seeing the DS on television and in magazines and thinking ‘If it’s a pen, I can also use it.’ I thought this to be very important.”

Next, Iwata questioned Kenichiro Ashida, who worked on the controller and system design. Ashida has been involved in Nintendo controllers since the time of the Super NES. When asked about the difference between general industrial design and industrial design for games machines, Ashida said, “Game system industrial design is deeply connected with the software, the application that’s used. I’ve been specializing in industrial design since my college years, but prior to entering Nintendo, I hadn’t experienced industrial design so closely tied up with software. In particular, with controller design, we have to keep in mind that this is something that’s used when playing software. With the Wii, we were unable to clearly see the shape of software, so this was an extremely difficult area.”

Next up was chief software producer Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of some of Nintendo’s most famous franchises. Miyamoto commented that the biggest issue when dealing with the controller was in “how to persuade users and designers who’ve gotten used to current interfaces. This was an extremely high hurdle.”

Ashida commented with his opinion on what exactly makes the Wii controller different. “Personally, I now have a family, and the amount of time I have to spend getting into a tough game has decreased. A gap has grown between the developer in me and the gamer in me.” But that apparently changed with the Wii. “I had the strong feeling that this is a game machine that my family and I can use. Specifically, wouldn’t it be okay to reset the style where you hold a controller in both hands and play intently from the morning? Not that we’re criticizing that deep play style, but I felt the future in this concept of resetting the style of holding the controller in both hands.”

With one of Nintendo’s major Wii event set to take place very soon, make sure you stay posted to Advanced Media Network in the coming days.