Here’s an interesting audio interview with a former Nintendo of America Associate Producer. He was with the company for over eleven years, from the end of the SNES days all the way up until a few months ago. It also gives a little bit of insight into the workings of the company. Some quotes from Jeffrey Kalles talking about Nintendo:
In the past, the multi-player experience with Nintendo’s game systems have been, pretty much, very personal. You have to be in the same room as the person. Do you think they’re going to push more strongly for multi-player in the Revolution release?
I think so, I think they’re finally realizing it’s a viable market, it’s a viable thing to do. The Wi-fi connection, I think, is showing that. Mario Kart on DS is a blast. It hadn’t released yet when I left, but, here’s a little insight, everyday everyone was playing Smash Brothers, as a group they were playing Smash Brothers, everyday at lunch, since it had come out, and that didn’t stop until we started to get builds of the Mario Kart in the Development Group. Once we started to get Mario Kart, everyday at lunch people would start to bust out their DS’s and play Mario Kart instead, so that says something about the staying power and the fun-ability of it. The fun-ability…boy, I’m just making up all sorts of words here. The fun playability of it. So, the fact is that Nintendo recognized it and used it as the flagship title to launch the Wi-fi connection, and once they work all the bugs out and you can play without slow down or whatever. I haven’t had the chance to jump on and try it out. I think you’ll see a lot more support for it, and you’ll see that extended onto the console.
In comparison to today’s consoles, how good are the graphics on the Revolution? Are they like significantly better then today’s, say, X-Box or Playstation 2, or is it really not that big of a jump?
Let me say this; it will be an improvement over current generation, it’ll be, I think, on par with up-coming generations, so I guess it’s kind of now, since the 360’s launched. The emphasis, though, is not on the graphics. With that being said, I have not seen final graphics running. I don’t have any particular keen insight into what final graphics will look like on the system.
But they are pushing for better?
It’s going to come down to ease of development, because that’s really what they want to do, is tap into, maybe, a lot of these Developers that cant do games anymore because maybe the budgets are too high and the teams too big. It’s ease of development, whether increase graphic performance limits that, they’ll tweak that or whatever. I don’t think anyone will be disappointed by their graphics.
Looking forward to playing it! Game on everyone!
