No News From Nintendo
Rachel Rosmarin, 03.08.07, 6:10 PM ET
San Francisco - Shigeru Miyamoto, the man behind Mario, was 30 minutes late on Thursday. But the crowd waiting to see the Nintendo senior marketing director speak at the Game Developers Conference didn't seem to mind.
"I had a very good time last night," he explained in English. Miyamoto continued on in Japanese, handing over translation duties to an interpreter. The developers and Nintendo fans in the audience knew better than to expect news announcements from Miyamoto. In February Nintendo announced that the Japanese government would be selling off its stake in the company, which means it is going to be mum for a while as the transaction goes through.
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.... But Miyamoto thinks powerful technology isn't crucial. "Gamers are not always looking for better graphics, audio and production," he says. "Pursuing the latest technology is one way to create something revolutionary, but something that's really new happens when a designer has a persistent idea."
Not all GDC attendees agreed. "The Wii is a piece of shit!" insisted Chris Hecker, a developer for the Electronic Arts game "Spore," during a GDC session called "Burning Mad: Game Publishers Rant." Hecker said that Nintendo isn't as committed to creating artful games as Sony and Microsoft, and that the company is only interested in producing fun games with limited graphical appeal. The Wii console, he said, is hardly better than two GameCube consoles duct-taped together.
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