If you didn't have to worry about game sales at all and could just make the game that you wanted to make, what would that game look like?

MIYAMOTO: For me, it's really a game that really anyone can play and just pick up and get involved in. Like the kind of game that I could just set out on the street and people could just walk by and pick it up and play and have fun with it.

[Laughter]

Is there any game that you would like to do but say to yourself, "I can't do that because it's not going to sell?"

MIYAMOTO: Yeah, there are a lot of ideas like that which I do have and that we never really quite get to bring out. Recently, one example would be Stage Debut or Talent Studio, which I think we showed at E3 last year. It's a really simple system, it's really fun. You can take someone's picture using a Game Boy Advance camera and put it onto models in a GameCube game and make them do things. It's a really fun idea and we've had three or four people working on it for quite a while but we just can't seem to find a way to turn it into a product. But the nice thing about that is that even with three or four people working on a project like that for two years, that's still cheaper than one month of selfless development of Zelda. [Laughs]

During Miyamoto's European tour, there was some mention of a Metal Gear game for GameCube and Game Boy Advance. Can you clarify what was said about that at that time?

MIYAMOTO: It is true that we are working with Mr. Kojima to try and bring the Metal Gear series to the GameCube but at this point we really haven't talked at all about any kind of connectivity features. I think what happened was that at the same time I mentioned that, I was also mentioning that we were in conversations with Electronic Arts about how to bring more connectivity to their games and add some new gameplay style that way. I think that somebody took the two and kind of combined them together to create what's turned out to be a little misunderstanding. I think I also mentioned the fact that Mr. Kojima is working on a new Game Boy Advance game at the same time so I think the three of those together got all mixed up and some wires got crossed.

When can we expect Metal Gear for GameCube?

MIYAMOTO: It is in progress, but please talk to Konami about that.

[Laughter]

Anthropologists say that if you look at the games of the children, you can see the next hundred years of a society. You always emphasize fun in games, and I'm wondering if on another level if you've though about what videogames as the new game for our children is fostering.

MIYAMOTO: Well as a creator, I really strive to create videogames that people play not so much alone, but with their family and that people play together. And so, in that sense, in looking at the games that I've made, I really hope that I'm trying to foster a situation where children are essentially getting the same kind of communication and interaction with other people that I had when I was a child.

But yeah, on the other hand you do have things like the Internet where people can go online and talk to people far away. You can talk to people in chat rooms and you may trust them despite the fact that they could be giving you false information or may be untrustworthy. And so I think there are definitely some aspects to this that people need to pay attention to and be weary of, and try to find ways to improve. I think especially as an interactive medium, it really does go beyond just the freedom of expression and the freedom to create. We really should take a look at what the effects of this will be and parents should look at how they can keep track of what their children are doing. Because we're at a point where children can sneak off and secretly buy mature-rated games. There's definite affects to that and I think it's something that we should all be thinking about.

Whenever Nintendo's been asked, "When are we going to see more online games?" The response has always been, "When we see that the market is ready." Is there a possibility that at E3 this year, we'll be able to see more online or LAN-style network games from Nintendo?

MIYAMOTO: I can't really say a whole lot about E3 right now, but Nintendo is still at a point where we don't currently see online games being successful as a business model at this point so I don't think you can expect to see any serious look at online games at E3. I do think that the communication aspect of networking and linking games together, including LAN games, is definitely very interesting. We're going to look at ways to show that off at E3. Particularly linking the Game Boy Advance and the GameCube and linking four GBAs together, which is also kind of a form of communication and networks.

What about linking GameCubes together?

MIYAMOTO: [Laughs] Unfortunately I can't say anything today.

How content are you with the connectivity Nintendo's been able to show off on Game Boy Advance so far?

MIYAMOTO: No, I think we're still in the middle of a big challenge in trying to show off the capabilities of [connectivity] and we're still looking for some more definitive examples to show off. One of the preconditions for connectivity is that everyone has to have all these cables and people who have a GameCube also have to have a Game Boy Advance and that may not always be the case. Up until now, we've really been focusing on taking the idea of connectivity and presenting it in a way so that people who do have both can find, "oh, I do get more value out of this," or, "this is a little bit more fun," or, "this is an interesting experience." We're looking more at trying to build on that and establish the basic groundwork for us to go forward.

This year we're going to see 70% to 80% of all first-party releases are going to have some form of connectivity with them. In Japan, we've also released Nintendo Puzzle Collection for GameCube and that has a cable packed in with it. So we think that we're actually going to get to a level of proliferation with the cables and Game Boy Advance and GameCube connectivity that we'll be able to show some more concrete examples. This year we'll be showing off more concrete examples of that with Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles and perhaps - and this is not necessarily certain - with Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire versions of Stadium for GameCube, maybe something like that.

Does Nintendo feel they need to wait to show off connectivity at the level that we saw at Space World one year where they swapped Kirby in-between GameCube and GBA until they have an installed user base for it?

MIYAMOTO: Actually, unfortunately work on the Tilt and Tumble project, or the Roll-A-Rama project, has kind of slowed at this point because of the demands of many of our other projects that we've been working on. But definitely yeah, that's an example of a game that does require that special user base and a cartridge with tilt sensor technology. And we've come up with a lot of other good ideas as well so… hopefully.