Initially, I was quite bitter about the negative response that we received at E3, but in the end, I believe that it was critical for us to get that feedback at the time that we did. In many ways, creating is about suffering. “You must learn from your pain. Those who do not will never become what they are truly meant to be." This is something that Miyamoto has been saying a lot lately, and though I have been making games for a long time, for someone like me to struggle to create something true without some amount of suffering is near impossible. There have been many occasions where in the final stages of development, Miyamoto has said to me, “You aren’t thinking about the end user," what’s come to be known as “upending the tea-table," and I felt that Twilight Princess had officially been christened. For those of you who are curious, please feel free to check the Zelda section of “Iwata Asks" on the Nintendo homepage to read more about the anguish I experienced after being reprimanded by Miyamoto.

The Twilight Princess was completed as Miyamoto and I had envisioned, and having heard that in North America and Europe, the majority of users who bought the Wii also purchased a copy of Twilight Princess, I thought that all of our hardship and hard work had paid off. 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. Based on this and realizing that Zelda needed to change even more, I was well aware that getting more people interested in the title was going to be difficult. DS Zelda, which we are planning to release this year, is full of concessions that we made based on this understanding, and I am looking forward to seeing what kind of results our efforts bring about.