This is an interview conducted with Miyamoto and his PR manager. M is for Miyamoto and S is for the PR manager.

Q: I wanted to ask about the target audiences for the Gamecube and GB Advance, but was the Gamecube designed for the same group as the N64? Also, the Advance will have downward compatibility with portable phones. However, regular GB software will still be sold, so what position is the company trying to put it in?

M: Well, I'm not sure how well I can answer this, but I think you're right on the money on the Gamecube design, in how it'll be used. Most of our developers are gamers, after all, so it's not like we totally ignored them, but in order to get as many people as possible to use it... the controller design is the same way; it's gotten more complex but we wanted to keep some simple aspects in it, is how I wanna call it. I mean, I'll be using this machine for the next 5 years or so, so even five years from now, when the Super Mario generation begins to become parents themselves (laughs), I want the system to be supported by the family.

Q: But, from the N64, will the users still be the younger age group?

M: I'd like to expand that. Mm-hmm.

Q: You're still hoping for them, though, right?

M: Well.. the design is such that adults wouldn't have any problem with it, either. And as for the GB Advance, I've done a lot with that but it'd be better to let the spokesman talk about that.

S: Thank you. I'm sorry, I wasn't here at the time of the question...

Q: It was about the target audience of the GB Advance, but with the regular Game Boy's new cell-phone system, you seem to be aiming for a young audience. I was wondering if you were going for an older age range in your user target.

S: Well, it's not as if we are all of a sudden aiming towards adults with the GB Advance, but if I say that, then Miyamoto'd say becuase it's the "Game Boy" we've been aiming at nothing but boys all this time...

M: (laughs)

S: It doesn't really matter if it's Game Boy or Game Adult or Game Lady, but the freeness, being able to play anywhere, that concept defines the Game Boy, so now thanks to advancing technology we can create games more interesting and more fun. It's because of that we can release the GB Advance. So the basic concept is completely unchanged from the original Game Boy. As for the previous question, you can't really divide them like that. The same question came with the Game Boy Color's debut, about what was going to happen with the GB Pocket now. What everyone thought Nintendo thought was, you know, it's not that a black and white screen necessarily means it's fun, so maybe color's not so important after all? So the hope was that the sales would be good, Color or no. But then, strangely enough, once people tried Color they didn't want to go back to black and white. It's not like we're being told that here, but when Advance comes out, people will realize "Wow, this is great. I'm not going back after this." But if you ask me if we're expecting 100% turnover to Advance, we're not thinking of that. It's a gradual change, I think. For example, the GB Pocket sold all right; about 10 percent of our sales are still the Pocket, actually. It's smaller than the Color, and it's cheap, after all. And when you get down to playing, you can definitely still enjoy it, so we figured about 10 percent. As long as users like that are around, we can sell what we had before, but we won't know how many Advances and how many Color systems will be out until we see. I'm sure as long as the need is there, Color will continue.

M: The Game Boy was already out when the N64 was created, so we wondered if we could connect Nintendo's products together for new, different play possibilities. We made a lot of plans for that, but it was still just a tacked-on solution. With the Gamecube and Advance, they were designed at the same time, so the Advance got delayed becuase of that, but (laughs). We wanted the concept of playing in a wider area, connecting to a larger pool. I think there's a photo of how you can use it wherever you want above, but if you have the Nintendo family of products you'll find yourself open to a whole new range of possibilities. That's what we're aiming for now.

Q: This has a little to do with your last answer, but when the N64 came out, the differences between it and the Super Famicom were immediately obvious. With Mario 64 you could fully explore a 3D world, but now going from N64 to Gamecube, how will you explain that to the kids?

M: As we showed yesterday, there's a huge number of merits, and we can't really imagine what kind of new games are possible. When the Super Famicom came out, it's not as if people were all of a sudden bored with the Famicom, or stopped playing it, but definitely when people moved to the Super Famicom or the N64, it was obviously a totally different experience. So, with the Gamecube, if you imagine the N64 as the Famicom, then this is the Super Famicom. Even more than that jump, the technology jump with Gamecube is probably more rapid. It's up to the software companies to decide how to use it, but that's the way you should think of it.

Q: Mr. Miyamoto, as a game creator, what sort of things do you want to do?

M: Um.., I'll quit doing PR after today.

Q: (laughs)

M: I'm really terrible at this, I tell you (laughs). Leave me alone and I just quit talking. But, hmm.. if people ever get bored of games, then that means the creators are getting bored of games. It's vital that the maker can't get bored of what he's making. And right now I definitely feel a good response from what I'm doing, with the game-style demos I presented yesterday. Someone told me "Your games're gonna be late if you make these", but everyone was having fun, and we're really looking forward to the future. Of, you know, yelling at the hardware people, or (laughs). People who didn't like things before, or who were always criticizing everything, they're all working happily on the machine now. So we're all happy, and I'm sure we'll make something cool.

Q: Sounds like PR's really on your case about the games. (laughs)

S: Yeah, we had a lot of arguments about this show. Of course, we agreed on a lot, too, we knew we had to release something for PR.

M: They said don't show anything that could give away any of our games. (laughs) We haven't shown any screens of what I'm doing as the main project now.

S: Right. We wondered if we should have, but then the ideas might get stolen, so. Especially, between the time we announced N64 in November 1995 and when it came out in June 1996, there was a lot of things we saw we weren't very happy with; a lot of our ideas were imitated. Beyond the Rumble Pak, there was the analog stick that got released a day before ours was. It's too easy to steal those kinds of ideas. It's kind of a delicate task, so we hope you understand.

M: There isn't anything? Oh, I guess I better shut up about software then (laughs).

Q: I was wondering about selling points. In yesterday's presentation, the emphasis was definitely placed on "game machine" rather than "appliance", but, for example, if you saw it in an electronics appliance store you might be caught in by the design because it looks new and refined. Were you thinking of increasing the places where it could be sold in comparison to N64? Also, switching gears, back before there was a time when it looked like you would use DVD technology, but is the 8cm disk proprietary technology?

S: About selling, I'm afraid I have nothing really to comment on there. It's certainly a possible scenario, but as far as sales go we plan to go the same route we have before. As opposed to fanning our sales out, we're definitely also thinking along the lines of e-commerce, too. Since we own a 3 percent stake in Lawson [a chain of convenience stores], we've realized that convenience stores are good for distribution and getting products out, so we will continue along those lines. Beyond that, we're not especially dealing with appliance makers or distributors. Of course, we are receiving a lot of technological help from Matsushita now, and as for the media, we don't know about Matsushita until they make their announcement, but their plan for the Matsushita-version Dolphin was to make it compatible with Nintendo's games, and also to be able to play Hollywood movies. So that goes beyond mere electronic appliances there. As for the disk, if you really want to make the best game system possible, you first have to brainstorm about it. So starting with Miyamoto everyone was discussing this. Miyamoto touched on this yesterday, but the idea of just being able to carry it around the house easily, or not skipping if it's kicked or whatever, it's important to come up with those ideas first. And when we wondered if a full-size disk was necessary; Miyamoto and others discussed it during development, and we thought that that wasn't the road we should take. We can put 190 Super Mario 64s on what we have here, so right now the need to surpass that isn't there. Even if it is, then oh well, we'll make it a two-disk game. That was the conclusion. Another very important point is about why we joined with Matsushita on this, and that was mainly for copyrights and copy protection. I'm no technician in the field of security, but after Takeda and others discussed copy protection they decided it'd be best to call on Matsushita for it. And the 8cm disks make it even easier to avoid simple copying right off the bat. Even if the protection did get cracked, it'll be impossible to release copies in high volume, like you can with CD-R copiers now to copy PlayStation software. That's definitely beginning to destroy the European market. So upon thinking of that, 8cm disks were definitely the overall way to go. If Miyamoto decided to make something, then the software...

M: Well, copy protection is a very deep problem, so it's a proprietary format on a proprietary disk. DVD-Rs will probably be standard issue in a few years, after all. I wanted to put the disc in a case or something, but we kept it by itself to ensure compatibility with Matsushita's machine. We'll worry about that later.

Q: Are you worried about the lack of space on the disks?

S: Not really that, but recent games...

M: It's not like 8cm disks are a negative thing. The 8cm question (laughs); people were always asking why it's not a regular 12cm disk, it's making me nervous (laughs).

Q: When I went back to my editor to report on it, he was like "So we can't play music CDs?" and so on. We had a discussion about it, but we were wondering about the necessity of the 8cm disks...

M: If you could view movies then you wouldn't play the games.

Q: (laughs)

M: You don't have to write that. (laughs)

Q: (laughs)

M: I didn't mean anything major by that. You know, if people buy the games without copying them, then the makers can keep on going, and so on. Media's media, but what's important is the software inside it, and the software doesn't really care about the media. We helped save the earth's resources that little bit by taking centimeters off each disk, no? (laughs)

Q: Once the disc-media announcement was made, Mr. Miyamoto, you said that once ROM cartridges go away you'll probably get annoyed once you run into problems with load time How has that been shaping up?

M: That's still there, definitely. But we've found ways to get rid of it. And, sure, I'm still worried about it, but more than that, I've always been worried about how much RAM is in the system more than anything else. How much you can load in at one time. Now that the Gamecube is on disc media, we'll be able to do that much more with the space. So now we're building up know-how with regards to load speed, so I'm sure it'll turn out all right.

Q: I wanted to ask about the system, but the MPU [Gekko], does it control both the main and graphic sections of the systems? Is that the right way to think about it?

M: I'll turn this one over to PR.

S: Well, sorry, I haven't prepared about that. (laughs)

M: Hold on a second. Do you have the concept book?

S: Yes.

M: OK, while he's studying... (laughs)

Q: You mentioned that the Gamecube is similar to the FC/SFC evolution, so what do you think the next new game system, that will storm the world the way the Famicom did, be like? Also, I was wondering how much you think about character business and licensing during the creation of games.

M: Mmm, that's a good question. We tried creating quite a lot of different things with the N64, but as far as power went, there were limits, as I said yesterday. There are naturally bottlenecks in any hardware, so I think we did well with those. We made the N64 ourselves, after all. So, even when we tried to give it all on the new games we were making, there were... the limitations that were there are all gone now, so now as I said before it's now up to the software people to work on it, and it's up to me to try my best to work on it. That's how I've felt on everything since the Super Famicom. I want the Gamecube to be something people want to bring into their homes. As for the character business, it's been going on forever, but thanks to the brutal popularity of Pokemon, the importance of media mixing, or on the other hand the fact that there's a bubble in relying on character licensing for profit for too long, is well known. I don't want to get on that bubble, of course. The first and foremost thing we are, are creators of interactive, fun things, and we'll be doing just that on the Gamecube and on the mobile machines. In order to do that, if Mario is good for it we'll use Mario, if Pokemon are good for it we'll use them, and we'll create new characters if necessary. And that naturally has potential to it, so it might become the next business, that sort of thing. It's definitely not as if the game business is a far-away part of the character business in this marketplace.

Q: Do you have the answer from before?

M: The spokesman will have that. It might be better to verify it with Takeda.

Q: Sorry. There's one more thing I want to confirm with Takeda. I know the main memory is 24MB, but I was wondering what the A memory was.

M: (laughs) Think of it as something really awesome.

Q: I was wondering about that from before.

M: Well, it doesn't really matter yet, does it?

Q: (laughs)

M: It might be better for us not to lay out the big numbers and details right now anyway. As far as the current announcement goes, it'd be great if you just remember that we can move 128 Marios around.

Q: All right.

Q: The Gamecube appears to be designed to make it easy to develop for as possible, but I was wondering what steps were taken in that area. Also, as far as launch titles go, would five titles be about right? Or can third parties be included? Would the launch be delayed if the games aren't there yet?

S: That's a lot of questions for one time (laughs), but to begin...

M: First, about software, we'll go official on that next May. I can't make any promises right now. As for why next May, I can't tell you why yet. Right now, though, we are pushing for five titles on our own. Beyond that, if I say too much then Xbox might start changing their strategies and I'd be in trouble (laughs).

Q: (laughs)

M: I really don't want to say anything. Very generally speaking, there's a lot to do. To make a game, you have to move polygons around. For 3D games, you know. And to display polygons, you have to do a lot to get them going. The mathematical calculations for polygon displays, light sources, shape changes, textures, and so on. Recent hardware has been all about how many polygons, but in general if you do textures that number's cut in half. And if you do lightsourcing, then it's cut in half again, and whatever you do, it's half, half, half. And then when you notice what you're doing you're going at about a tenth of the speed you were. And then in the hardware there're bottlenecks that cause everything to stop if you hit them, which will cut everything to a tenth. So, we can say it does a hundred million polygons, but in reality it might only show five million. There are lots of bottlenecks in drawing graphics, and we're using a graphic chip for that now, but the CPU is still calculating everything else. Even if it's a super high speed CPU, it's still doing a lot of graphics work. Also, we had this problem with the N64 too, but the sound is done via the CPU too. It's a bad habit becuase we say "The CPU's incredibly fast, putting sound on it's no problem", and then we can create some nice sound. It's the same thought process as we had with the Famicom. The Super Famicom was too much trouble, so that has a special sound chip. The N64 is a million times faster, so we had the CPU take care of it. Once we actually put it in, though, it got very, very tough. (laughs) It becomes a competition in the CPU between sound, graphics, and game-related things. Just like battling for memory, like battling for processing for speed, like the artist and musician and game designer battling each other. Everyone has to share. That sort of thing. You can't just make a game by moving polygons around. Oh, and there's also terrain mapping, for collision detection. When things move, you have to make sure they're still touching the floor. The CPU does all of that too, not the polygons. And if the CPU has too much work to do, then everything else has to wait. So, basically, there's a ton to do besides merely moving polygons, so we have to divide the work evenly. If you look at the Gekko, or how many blocks or bits there are, you might think there's not much going on in there. The cutting edge of technology now is nowhere near the cutting edge next year. It's last year's cutting edge. 0.18 is this year's cutting edge, but if you talk about the future, it won't be the cutting edge for long. However, if you see how everything is balanced, then maybe the Gamecube will be on the edge for a few years. And so... what was I talking about? (laughs) This is tough, quit talking to me in numbers. (laughs) Some of it's a lie, though. With the Mario demo yesterday, maybe it wasn't really 128 of them moving around. Marios and Koopas were going around on that pizza-like table; they were fighting in Mario 64, but. And there was fire there too, but that was it. However, yesterday there were maybe three Marios, and the rest was just pictures. Like, maybe we can get ten going at once, so don't worry. That's the best modern hardware can do, and all. Tens of millions of workstations are built into that system, you know, and I doubt that's going too far.

S: But you didn't really do that, did you?

M: No. (laughs) So don't write that. Really, don't write that. (laughs) I wouldn't do anything like that, so calm down, calm down (laughs). The point is, we don't worry too much about that sort of thing while making games, and the game comes first. I don't want to say things like it's not an entertainment system, but as a concept, you have to realize that it was planned to be a machine for games. As far as selling points and prices go, even if all I say is about the game aspect, if you look at what's written down here, you'll probably think it's a multimedia machine. It's powerful enough to do anything, after all. It can do it, to be sure, but the idea is, "Let's make some really cool games!" - that's the hardware's concept.

Q: And as for the development kits...

M: Oh, right, right. I've dealt with them a fair amount, but I'll let PR handle this one.

S: They've been publically released.

Q: To the third parties?

S: Well, not just second parties. Of course, people close to our company have begun their development already, the third parties. I'm not entirely sure who's going to be a third party and who's not, but in Miyamoto's announcement yesterday, a lot of what he was saying was toward licensees, in the content. There was a lot geared toward game creators. Many only come in once they see the stance and ideas of the company. As for any concrete dates, no one has released anything on that yet.

M: I don't know. (laughs). Straight from PR.

S: Our current stance is first to make games that stand upon themselves, to show what you can make with the system, to show that Nintendo means business.

M: Are you doing anything?

S: Hmm?

M: We're going to be holding announcements and meetings for the third parties, right? Is any of that planned yet?

S: Yeah. We'll be dealing with that around September.

M: Yesterday was the starting point, so. Once we get into next year I think we'll be getting to a fair amount of people. Obviously, in the end, we can't do it all by ourselves. The designers, all of them, want the development kits. If a team has 50 people then they want 50 kits, but with 50 kits 10 different companies can do development work. And once they come out in volume, development becomes faster. On the other hand, if you release kits too fast then they're usually imperfect and hard to use. That just makes third parties mad at us when they buy them. So, I think that development kits will be perfect once next year comes along, but it'll get gradually better and better as this year goes on. People might think we're doing horrible if you write it like that, so make sure you confirm that with PR.

Q: So kits are already being given to third parties?

M: It's going fine. The chips are working fine and everything. We're using them, too.

Q: I see. Thank you.

M: They're pretty inexpensive. I think they're the most inexpensive devkits we've ever released. And I don't think we'll need to make as many as before. There's only one CG CAD tool necessary. Well.. if you want something really extravagant, you can group a bunch of tools together, but basically development costs will be about a tenth of the N64 costs; that's very poor budgeting on my part, but (laughs) I think it'll be under a tenth. Our managers are really happy about that. He asked if that kind of estimate is for real, but he signed off on it anyway. He signed off even though it's a whole digit off from five years ago, so it's probably all right.

Q: Is that just part of development, or a total figure?

M: A total figure, yes. This is how we experience it, so it's definitely not a lie. You can't write it, but (laughs).

Q: Out of the five titles for the Gamecube, which ones are you deeply involved with, Mr. Miyamoto?

M: Five of them (laughs). I don't know if it'll be five, or six, or seven, but I'm involved in all of them, so there's that many.

Q: Are there any you're particularly involved with?

M: Not really. More like, how much can I reduce the paperwork I have, sort of thing. (laughs). Of course, I have to do things like the demos yesterday.

Q: How much do you think the Gamecube will cost?

S: To be honest, it's still undecided. We've obviously gone away from cartridges, so the materials will be that much cheaper. There's no worry about that, but if it comes to me... Miyamoto says this too, but I think it'd be best to base prices on the value of the game. But that's the opinion of the creator, after all. As a company we have to balance the price with how many we want to sell, and we have our own costs too, so we will announce that at a more pertinent time.

Q: Will it be shooting up?

M: Well, I'd like to make games that are good enough to merit the price shooting up. If we had free media, like Aibo, I bet we could sell them at 250,000 yen too. (laughs). Really. I think it's really like that. What I'm afraid of are the makers waging price wars, reducing the system prices, and when that happens, the software will go to 980 yen and everyone's out of business. In the N64 days, we really didn't want to sell games for 9800 yen but we had to. I think prices have matured greatly now, as a result. But, still, if we sold games at 1900 yen everyone would die. On the other hand, if you come up with an idea that you can sell at 1900 yen and profit, that's a different story. Yamauchi's been telling me to do some monthly series, but I find that pretty tiring. You can sell that at 1980 yen, then. That's why, in the purest fashion, I want to do business based on the value of games, but that's beginning to fall apart. What happened in England five or six years ago is about to happen in America, although it hasn't quite reached Japan yet. That's why I want fathers to be able to buy software for their kids. Giving 2900 yen to your kid for a game is no fun, but if you can play it with him, then I think even 10,000 yen is fine. Right now I think Samba de Amigo is the greatest game ever. (laughs)

Q: The Gamecube's coming out next year, but how will the Nintendo 64 develop after this?

S: It'll keep on going. Things made this year will come out, but the Gamecube is coming out in July, and of course that's all Miyamoto is doing (laughs). I'm always saying this, and Miyamoto, who's usually working on 20 things at any one time, says this a lot too, but he definitely won't be saying "OK, the Gamecube's out. Let's go to something N64 now" or anything.

M: Maybe it's better if I answer. To put it another way, a little while ago I had to give up on something that really pained me to do so on, but if I didn't give it up then there's no way anything else could have been done. That title will come out. Conceptually it'll be out next week. Next week I think it'll be taking place, but really, everyone's buying millions of the cutting-edge machines, and not that many were made, and I know there're still more Super Famicoms being played out there. I'm not worried about it, but. So as far as the stores go, what's number-one to me is what's going on sale next year. Whether that's N64 or Gamecube or GB Advance, as far as the user's concerned there's already lots of carts available at the store. There's lots of new titles, too. I think we'll be OK, but.

S: As you saw in the show, our demos were filled mostly with characters everyone knows, and that's what we're keeping most important. We're not worrying as much about the hardware behind it. As N64 goes, there are definitely more titles coming out for it.

M: Can I do all the PR about the amazing titles we have in store? (laughs)

Q: About the GB Mobile System, I saw that a specialized homepage was being prepared for it, but will things like GB-specific tags for homepages, or image capabilities be made available?

M: I'll let PR handle that.

S: Well, as far as distribution methods go, we haven't talked at all about homepage creation yet, so it's a little difficult to answer that right now. As far as the Mobile Adapter goes, it's in the show, but it's mostly in the Pokemon Crystal section so children can understand what it's about easily, so you might want to take a look there. It might depend on your magazine's audience, but we're showing it in the simplest manner possible, so if it's possible for all of you to introduce it in the same fashion... Basically, there'll be mail servers, routers, I think news releases will also be available, but as I mentioned earlier, Nintendo is most concerned about how to use the system for play, so right now it's at the point where you can play Pokemon Crystal and trade Pokemon with people far away, so once the service is more focused, we will announce the details at that time.

Q: Thank you.

S: We're almost out of time, but are there any more questions?

Q: I noticed that there were no Landnet DD [64DD system] games shown.

S: Unfortunately, the timing of the show did not match the development of Landnet DD games, so we could not show anything this year. What about the Gamecube?

M: With the broadband adapter, as I said earlier, people will wonder if this isn't really a multimedia machine. (laughs) That's the key feature, but it's already all set. And, as Hagishima mentioned earlier, we're not intending to do any PR like "Connect to the Internet and do anything you want, even with the Mobile Adapter". Right now, all we're saying is that a connector's coming out. However, naturally we're working with hosts, trying to get things together. So look forward to more announcements. Right now, though, there's nothing to say, so no PR's taking place.