Nintendo
plans Zelda 64 for next big play
In 1979, Minoru Arakawa started Nintendo of America,
the subsidiary of the Japanese electronic-game giant, and is now NOA president.
Howard
Lincoln is now chairman. They helped resurrect the video-game industry
after Atari's fall from grace in the 1980s, withstood a strong challenge
from Sega, and watched the industry take a downturn. Now, Nintendo numbers
are rising again on sales of its latest system, the Nintendo 64. Both were
at last week's Electronic Entertainment Expo in Atlanta and talked with
USA TODAY home technology reporter Mike Snider.
Q: How do those older games from the '80s compare with games for the
current system, the Nintendo 64?
Arakawa: It's like a university compared with elementary school. The
graphics are so much better. The sound is much better. Everything is much
better.
Q: The video games Nintendo made a decade ago were considered toys.
Today's systems seem to catch on with older game players. Does that surprise
you?
Lincoln: We weren't surprised that adults play video games. Our demographics
certainly indicate that our primary market is boys 7 to 14. But in the
case of the Nintendo 64, a substantial number of players - more than 40%
- are over the age of 18. That's still 60% in the other direction. We market
to a certain demographic, but I don't think any of us is laboring under
the idea that video games are only for kids, because we have too many grandmas
and grandpas calling our call center with questions about playing these
games.
Q: Sony's PlayStation and Sega's Saturn offer more game choices,
but the Nintendo 64 seems to be holding its own. Why is that?
Lincoln: Our goal with N64 software is not quantity, but quality. We
have been very tough on ourselves and our third-party publishing partners
to get the most out of any N64 game that comes to market. The TRSTS sales
data (collected by Port Washington, N.Y., research firm NPD Group) show
that even though Nintendo has maybe 12 or so games out, seven of the top
games each month in terms of volume of retail sales are N64 games. That
suggests that the quality issue is being decided in our favor.
We are expecting a total of 40 games to be available by Christmas. But
we're never going to have as many games as the competition. I think that's
positive because we're going to continue to stress quality. We're dealing
with very complex technology and asking these game developers to create
in 3-D - that's not easy. We've always tried to launch a system with something
that is stunning. Super Mario 64 is. Those kind of games are hard to make.
Q: What new games did you show here?
Arakawa: We (have) four or five new games for the Nintendo 64, and those
are really as good as Super Mario 64 - Starfox 64, GoldenEye 007, Major
League Baseball Presents Ken Griffey Jr. and Banjo-Kazooie. Those are probably
among the best at the show.
Lincoln: Mr. (Sigeru) Miyamoto (designer of Donkey Kong, Super Mario
Bros. and Super Mario 64 ) has done Starfox 64. Here is a genius who was
to some extent limited by the technology and was not really able to create
a Starfox in a 3-D environment. With the N64, he is liberated and is able
to do so many things flying these space fighters in 3D environment. About
the only thing that is the same is the characters. In the case of the Griffey
game, it is a lot more fun to play a game where the character looks like
Ken Griffey, swings like him, runs like him and smiles like him. We can
do that with the N64.
Q: What else is in Nintendo's future?
Lincoln: Mr. Miyamoto's next masterpiece will be Zelda 64. We're only
showing it on tape at the show. It is due in the U.S. early next year,
and we think it will be another quantum leap in video-game play. We are
introducing a magnetic disk drive for N64 called the DD64, an attachment
to the N64 hardware with a write-able feature, that will be available in
Japan in March 1998 and spring of 1998 in the United States and thereafter
in Europe.
Q: Some analysts have said that the future of gaming is on PCs and
on line. What is Nintendo's opinion?
Lincoln: The PC-game market does not appear to be a threat to the dedicated
video-game market. The demographics are different, so it appears those
two industries can coexist. Certainly, the dedicated video game market
is expanding now much faster than the PC software market is. We are very
cognizant of the fact we're in competition with companies like our neighbors
here in Redmond (Wash.), Microsoft. The only thing we have disclosed so
far is that the DD64 will have a modem in it. We have been spending a lot
of time and a lot of effort in this area of interactive games and the Internet.
But we have chosen to play our cards very close to the vest. As near as
we can tell, no one is really making any money in this yet, but we feel
that eventually the technology will improve and somebody is going to figure
out how to do that. Hopefully, it will be us.
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