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we announced that the North American version, which was released at the beginning of the same year, had sold up to a million copies. But the truth of the matter was that the game did not fare as well in Japan
Chalk that up to Gamestop's pre-order incentive of getting OoT. They had 400k pre-orders or so, plus 600k, Wind Waker made it to platinum status in no time. This happened in the magical month of 2003, when the SP was introduced, along with the new iterations of Pokemon. They closed out their fiscal year with a bang.
about connectivity:
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It was too difficult to convince the consumer that they wanted to play the game.
Can't speak for Japan, but add to the fact that online play in North America was becoming standardized, and cheaper in comparison to connectivity, Nintendo lost out *Cue Penny-Arcade strip from the peanut gallery*. I enjoyed the hell out of Crystal Chronicles, but couldn't get other people to play with it. But they were inviting me to throw down on Xbox Live and PS2 games.
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That’s when I decided that if we didn’t have an effective and immediate solution, the only thing we could do was to give the healthy North American market the Zelda that they wanted.
Good call. Double good call that Miyamoto and the higher-ups didn't fight this. Triple good call for having Reggie make his appearance in 2k4, presenting this.
Zelda's getting another multiplayer player portion (with online no-less), and no one's complaining about it straying from the franchise. Yet when there's talk/wishing of Metroid having multiplayer, people start bitching left and right about not being true to its roots [/hypocrisy].
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“This direct control is exactly what Twilight Princess needs in order to penetrate a market experiencing gamer drift."
A)Call me a crazy codger, but I find hard to believe that having two versions of Zelda was thought of from the top down, as opposed from the higher ups. The theory that the 'Cube was on its deathbed, and the Wii needed a surefire hit makes more sense than what Aonuma spouted off.
B)I know he talked about his son got into Zelda (with a little assistance from his wife), but the only thing that newbie friendly was the controls. Otherwise, it was your typical Zelda, puzzles and all. Not very non-gamer friendly.
Quoted from the slide:
"If Zelda can be played on both Wii and the Gamecube, won't users be happy even though they have to wait until 2006?"
*Cue Mantidor and Co.*
Quoted from another slide:
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You need to get used to the Wii controls. Players can't do that with a show floor demo."
Game reviewers should have that taped to their TV when reviewing Wii games what I just bolded.
His retrospective on TP in general hearkens back to his GDC 2k4 phrase "Reality over realism." His explanation of sword controls exemplifies this.
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However, in comparison, sales figures were not what I had been hoping for in Japan, and so I believe that many users still have the impression that Zelda was too complicated and therefore too hard to play.
Wii Sports. 'Nuff said.
Overall, its good to hear from Aonuma (via Bill Trinen). With TP, he's shown that he can handle the Zelda franchise, with a little bit of Miyamoto's 'Upending the tea table' tactic. If Zelda DS has an online multiplayer portion, why not the next Wii version? If they're re-writing the rules of Zelda, anything is possible. Nothing should be ruled out.
EDIT:some spelling and grammatical fixes.
Topic: SPECIAL: Eiji Aonuma's GDC 2007 Presentation (Read 12442 times)
