Mr. Miyamoto, aren't you facing any issues when you are making software due to the fact that Wii is not HD-ready or haven't you felt the Wii does not have high enough spec? How about you, Mr. Takeda?
Miyamoto: I have made demo software for E3 and I have been making Wii titles now, but I have never felt that Wii needs more processing power. Actually, whatever spec numbers you may be talking about, there are always some technological limit. If anyone makes a game for HD, the hardware machine power must become more than quadrupled just to make it HD applicable. A similar thing can be said about the memory size. When developers are told that they can use as much memory size as they want, someone use them indiscriminately without thinking how it will affect other development activities, and it is becoming difficult for game directors to control the whole game development process. Such uncoordinated activities by each developer make the hardware work less efficiently and unnecessary development efforts must be taken for these activities. What we are trying to do is to create brand new freestyle entertainment that can be enjoyed by all the family members as well as by a single player. In making such entertainment, I have never felt stress about the power of Wii. Honestly, I have not been able to use 100% of GameCube's power yet, so I am very happy with Wii's far superior functionality.
Takeda: I don't think we have any problem about the hardware. It's just the matter of how you use the available technologies. We could use technologies to effectively process HD. In fact, Wii is using 90nano, SA and other state of the art technologies as well as DRAM integrated technology that others are also doing. Only the difference is, we are using these technologies differently from the others. Each company has its own idea on how they should use the technologies, and we believe our ways are the most desirable one for software creators.
Iwata: I am still a developer at heart, so allow me to add my comment. I think it is just a matter of the balance. As I said earlier, the notion to be able to make more beautiful graphics is tempting. High-resolution sounds tempting too. I myself can tell the resulted difference in these areas even if many others can't, and I don't say I don't like technologies. I am one of the engineers so I am excited with new functionality. However, if I only listen to the voices of my engineer spirit, the resulted machine will be bigger in size, will take a longer time to start playing after turning on the switch and must be pretty difficult to employ such unique functions as WiiConnect24. So, we made the decision by asking ourselves, "which would let us make more attractive proposals to the consumers?" and "which will be the more balanced way to use the technologies?" We did not include some functions but it is not because we couldn't do so. It was just that we eliminated them to make Wii a better proposal. Of course, we have had very heated discussions. Now that we had decided to take this approach, after attending E3 and having listened to the feedback from so many people, we are convinced that the decision we made was the right one. Of course, 5 years from today or 10 years from today, we will need to review and determine the new balance in order to come up with our new proposals in terms of the actual needs of the customers and many other factors including affordable price. I am not saying that Nintendo will never launch HD-ready hardware. Rather, it can happen. However, when we seriously look into the current penetration ratio of HD TV, the need to take a long time to start software applications after turning on the power, the big console body, heat, power consumption, etc., etc., we had to make a more well-balanced machine. So, we have no regret about Wii in terms of its well-balanced nature.
