Let me start off with a quick summary of Mr. Iwata’s keynote. If you didn’t feel like reading the semi-live blog, this’ll be a perfect substitute. I’ll do it as short and sweet as possible.
Upon entering the doors I was greeted to a gigantic room full of attendees all waiting to see the president of Nintendo. I sat down and prepared to live blog the speech. Aaron told me the internet wasn’t available so we resorted to a semi-live version, which consisted of Aaron blogging into a text document and me texting updates to Jonny so that he could post it onto the site. Whatever it takes right? It was well worth it too because from start to finish it was an exciting keynote.
Mr. Iwata started by talking about his history at Hal before he joined up with Nintendo. For years he had admired Miyamoto’s methods and techniques. For Miyamoto, game development began with a core conception and that concept always came with the observation of other human beings. He sees something a lot of people enjoy and pinpoints exactly what makes it fun. That’s why he can invent games that excite both veteran players and those who’ve never played games before.
Iwata then gave some figures and numbers all of which continue to display the success of the Wii, the DS and yes, even the Balance Board. This success is not limited to Nintendo but to the developers as well. 75% of third party games have each sold over a million copies. That’s impressive.
The biggest news (which should be no surprise by now) was the finally announced storage solution. The new 4.0 menu update adds the ability to save games onto an SD card and can even allow for the games to be played off of it. It took only two years so no big deal.
It wouldn’t be a Nintendo presentation though without any demonstrations right? That’s exactly what we got. With more and more purchases of the Wii Balance Board, more and more games can cater to its functionality. A great example of that is Nintendo’s rock climbing WiiWare title called Rock N’ Roll Climber which was first shown today. You use the Balance Board, Wii Remote and Nunchuk simultaneously to traverse up a cliff. Simple and fun, it should get a lot of people checking it out.
We got DSi titles demoed, an announcement that arcade titles are now available as part of the new Virtual Console Arcade and we even were told that all of us were getting copies of Rhythm Heaven for free after the show. How awesome is that!
Iwata happily ended his keynote with a trailer for the new adventure of Link on the DS, The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks. It’s the sequel to Phantom Hourglass. Think of it as the same thing except this time you’re a conductor of a train instead of sailing a boat.
The rest of the day was spent attending panels and checking out both expo floors. There were a ton of people looking for jobs in the video game industry. It’s gratifying knowing that there’s never a short amount of people willing to work for video games.
Check out the blogs later for a recap of two sessions I attended. The first being Masato Kuwahara presentation of the “Inspiration of the Nintendo DSi and the second being the Level-5’s “Techniques to Producing a Hit Game: From Professor Layton to Inazuma Eleven and The Another World. You won’t want to miss them.
That’s a wrap on Day 3! Expect Punch-Out and Excitebots impressions later this week. Pictures from the event will be available soon too. GDC just started and it’s already almost over.
