EL33TONLINE: News tag archive: satoruiwata
Nintendo has formally announced its plans to build a robust online service of equivalent quality and functionality to Xbox LIVE and the PlayStation Network by revealing the existence of the Nintendo Network.
Nintendo has re-confirmed that gamers living in major markets can expect to find the company’s next home console, the Wii U, on store shelves before the end of 2012.
Before its unveiling at E3 2011, it was never expected that Nintendo’s next home console would play Blu-ray discs as part of its multimedia offering, but it was firmly believed that the console would at least feature the ability to play DVDs.
According to information surfacing from an investor Q&A session during E3 2011, the Wii U will most certainly not be able to play Blu-rays… or standard DVDs.
Despite the fact that Kirby’s latest yarn-filled adventure is yet to become available in EMEA territories, a brand new Kirby game was revealed during a Nintendo investor meeting late last week, announced by none other than company president Satoru Iwata himself:
Oh dear, what a mess! But this is what happens when game news is slow, I guess…
Yesterday, word got out about how much money a few key Japanese videogame industry executives had earned in 2009, thanks to a new rule set out by Japan’s Financial Services Agency.
The rule requires executives at public companies to divulge the particulars of their salaries, if those salaries are greater than ¥100 million ($1.1 million). Naturally, we discovered the salaries of individuals such as Sega Sammy Holdings CEO Osamu Satomi, Square Enix CEO Yoichi Wada and Namco Bandai Holdings President Kazunori Ueno.
The salary of Nintendo’s very own president, Satoru Iwata, was also disclosed in order to adhere to this new rule, and it turns out that, not only did he earn a base salary of is ¥68 million ($764 000) in 2009, but with performance based bonuses, his earnings last year were boosted to ¥187 million ($2.1 million).
Thanks to a new rule from Japan’s Financial Services Agency requiring executives at public companies to divulge the particulars of their salaries (if those salaries are greater than ¥100 million, or $1.1 million, per year) we now know, more or less, how much money executives at Nintendo (and other game developers) earn annually.
And before you ask: Yes, it’s been an incredibly slow news day.
Disney Interactive and Junction Point’s action adventure title starring Mickey Mouse was unveiled to the public for the first time during Nintendo’s E3 2010 press conference, where the unique ‘drawing’ and ‘erasing’ gameplay mechanic was demonstrated to the audience.
While in the world of Disney Epic Mickey, players will be able to use the power of ‘paint’ to draw objects and items into the world to help them proceed, solve puzzles and gain the trust of the world’s inhabitants. Players can also use paint ‘thinner’ to erase objects from the world at will, even being able to erase walls, floors and ceilings to ease progress.
How you use these abilities will determine how the world and its characters react to you, which will in turn affect the way the story plays out.
You can see all of this in action in a couple gameplay videos below, and hear project head Warren Spector talk about Disney Epic Mickey:
Super Mario Galaxy 2 for the Wii has released in some parts of the world (Japan and North America), and as with any blockbuster first-party Nintendo title, Nintendo’s president Satoru Iwata is determined to grill developers involved in the project to find out about their experiences creating the game.
None other than Nintendo’s own Shigeru Miyamoto is featured in the latest edition of this interview series (entitled “Iwata Asks”), where the superstar designer talks about the development of Super Mario Galaxy 2, how the project began and how lessons learned during the creation of other games helped inform decisions on this new title.
During the interview, however, Miyamoto makes a curious statement regarding the place of story in a Mario game – specifically, that Mario games may not need or require stories or movies - and continues to chime on this point until he reveals what it is he’s getting at.
In a recently released investor report, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has announced the existence of the 3DS (a tentative title), an advanced Nintendo DS handheld with the ability to display 3D graphics without the use of special glasses to enable the effect.
Speaking to Kotaku yesterday, a Nintendo spokesperson has refuted reports that Nintendo’s Satoru Iwata had recently mused in a newspaper interview that a successor to the company’s DS and DSi would have “highly detailed graphics” and a “sensor with the ability to read the movements of people playing.”
Nintendo of America’s senior director of corporate communications, Charlie Scibetta, told Kotaku regarding the interview in question:
In comments made to Japanese newspaper The Asahi Shimbun, president of Nintendo, Satoru Iwata, has seemingly confirmed that the next instalment in the Legend of Zelda franchise will be available by year’s end.
In a wide-ranging interview, Iwata spoke about some of Nintendo’s goals for the coming year, such as expanding the number of DS WiFi hotspots in Japan in order to better facilitate the publisher’s ability to allow DS owners to use the handheld in a wider variety of ways in everyday life.
During Nintendo’s recent financial results question and answer briefing session for the fiscal year ending March 09, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata was naturally bombarded with a multitude of questions related to Nintendo’s current and future financial position, as well as their plans for growth.
One of the questions, however, dealt with Nintendo’s apparent lack of ideas, as they are failing to announce compelling videogame projects currently in development at the company to keep fans of their consoles happy and eager for the future.
In Iwata’s answer, he addresses the increasing amount of burnout that consumers experience as a particular game’s marketing machine starts up, where a title could be previewed and hyped for months before the game is even released, resulting in the feeling that gamers are already “done with it prior to launch”:
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