Nintendo's Miyamoto And Millions of Babies!
TV Program Schedule Channel news triggers infant avalanche
Shigeru Miyamoto
Nintendo's master of all things gametastic, Shigeru Miyamoto, has been caught up in one of the company's 'analogy' fests at a recent financial Q&A session.
Last time out, Nintendo's president, Satoru Iwata, Super Mario Galaxy staffers, Takao Shimizu and Takao Shimizu, went a bit batty about food. This time, it's Shiggy's turn - with babies, millions of them.
As part of an answer to the following question, "When you were talking about the TV Program Schedule Channel, you said you want people to be surprised by the way Nintendo makes this kind of stuff, but how do you define “Nintendo-esque”?" Miyamoto told the crowd the following:
"...we are making commercial products and we want our customers to use them exactly as we want them to do. Especially the TV Program Schedule Channel, which is more of a utility product, we want to develop it so that users will use it as closely as possible to what we intended. In other words, we are feeling as if we are asking someone else to take care of our own babies.
"We want you to know more and more about the baby. If it is at all possible, we wish we could accompany the baby, but we cannot visit the million households who have our babies."
Once the babies had run their course, Miyamoto also let us into some details regarding the ways in which he likes to work, saying the following:
"I am making it a point of not calling a video game, “a piece of work.” Of course, from the perspective that each individual is putting his or her personal hobby and interests and thoughts into it and delivering that outcome to customers, it can be categorized as a piece of work, but I am carefully refraining from calling them, “works”.
"The creator of a work creates the work by putting their thought into it, and those who will evaluate the piece of work are free to take any kind of emotion out of it.
"Directors of games would like to explain a lot about their games to players who test these games while under development, but I have never allowed them to do so, because we can never do this same thing for actual purchasers of the games. Our philosophy is that we have to do our best so that our customers will eventually learn everything that the game developer could tell them if they were sitting next to them. I think such an attitude is very unique to Nintendo."
The full Q&A is available over here.
Last time out, Nintendo's president, Satoru Iwata, Super Mario Galaxy staffers, Takao Shimizu and Takao Shimizu, went a bit batty about food. This time, it's Shiggy's turn - with babies, millions of them.
As part of an answer to the following question, "When you were talking about the TV Program Schedule Channel, you said you want people to be surprised by the way Nintendo makes this kind of stuff, but how do you define “Nintendo-esque”?" Miyamoto told the crowd the following:
"...we are making commercial products and we want our customers to use them exactly as we want them to do. Especially the TV Program Schedule Channel, which is more of a utility product, we want to develop it so that users will use it as closely as possible to what we intended. In other words, we are feeling as if we are asking someone else to take care of our own babies.
"We want you to know more and more about the baby. If it is at all possible, we wish we could accompany the baby, but we cannot visit the million households who have our babies."
Once the babies had run their course, Miyamoto also let us into some details regarding the ways in which he likes to work, saying the following:
"I am making it a point of not calling a video game, “a piece of work.” Of course, from the perspective that each individual is putting his or her personal hobby and interests and thoughts into it and delivering that outcome to customers, it can be categorized as a piece of work, but I am carefully refraining from calling them, “works”.
"The creator of a work creates the work by putting their thought into it, and those who will evaluate the piece of work are free to take any kind of emotion out of it.
"Directors of games would like to explain a lot about their games to players who test these games while under development, but I have never allowed them to do so, because we can never do this same thing for actual purchasers of the games. Our philosophy is that we have to do our best so that our customers will eventually learn everything that the game developer could tell them if they were sitting next to them. I think such an attitude is very unique to Nintendo."
The full Q&A is available over here.
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