Sep 30 2007
If Nintendo sees you as a threat, you won’t see another day
Dave Perry, distinguished game developer, talked with GamesIndustry about several industry aspects, including Nintendo’s current situation with the Wii from a developer’s standpoint.
What do you think about the development situation on the Wii, in that a lot of publishers are jumping in late to the party and they’ve also got to compete with Nintendo’s first-party titles?
That’s the bottom line. Do your homework. You have to allow for that. You can’t assume it is going to be like the other platforms, because you are going to have Nintendo taking most of the sales. And if Nintendo really sees you as a threat, they will take the moves to wipe you out. They are not going to let you win.
Meaning, if you sell your game and you are charging USD 60 or 50, or whatever price you choose, they will sell their games at USD 39.99 and they will kick your ass. So, the bottom line is, whatever you thought your business plan was, they can shake your world at a moment’s notice and they have a track record of doing that. So I would be very concerned with wanting to bet the farm on a Nintendo platform.
….Hopefully, everyone heeded the Nintendo message. Easy to play is very important in this industry. Does anyone get that yet? You can go back to Apple, who taught us the same thing. Time after time after time they put out a new iPod with the same controls. Why? Because adding ten more buttons, which would have been very tempting and very easy to do, would have made it more complex. Keeping that system, that round dial that does everything magically, is part of the proof that making things easier sells.At conferences for a while, before the Wii, I talked about the fact that, if one of the companies took away all the buttons and left us back with the A and B buttons and a d-pad, would the industry die? The answer is no. I believe we would find a way. Every game would still work.
I’m now very interested to see the response next time around from Microsoft and Sony. Do they just do an arms race move, or do they work on controls too? [The Wii] was very disruptive to our industry, and we need that. That’s what keeps us all very healthy.
You can read the rest of the interview with him below.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
