LOS ANGELES -- Nintendo's Cammie Dunaway wants you to know that she is not fake.
"Tell your blog that I'm really a genuinely smiley, nice person. Because people think I'm fake, smiling up there," Nintendo's new executive vice president said in an interview during last week's **E3 Media & Business Summit. Dunaway was referring to the company's poorly received E3 press conference days before, in which she served as the lead presenter. Gaming fans watching at home, and even some in-person attendees, thought her exuberant performance sounded like false enthusiasm for the company's lineup of mostly casual games.
Personally, I think Dunaway, a former Yahoo executive who joined Nintendo of America last year, is a convenient scapegoat for angry gamers disappointed by Nintendo's lack of hard-core content. That's a real issue, of course, one we tackled right off the bat in the interview. Read on for more info on Nintendo's business plans, including:
- Where all the hard-core content is
- Why Nintendo won't be surprising us with last-minute 2008 game announcements
- The official answers on Virtual Console's scaled-back schedule and lack of storage
- What's up with Professor Layton
__Wired.com: __Let me preface this by saying, I understand that Nintendo keeps getting hammered with: Wii is a fad, you're not going to keep engaging these Wii Sports people, they're going to get bored of it, and you had to show how Nintendo is going to keep these people playing with new ideas. A-plus. Home run. But as a hard-core gamer who bought a Wii for Zelda and Mario, where's the content for me?
__Cammie Dunaway: __Well, you heard [Nintendo President Satoru] Iwata's commitment, that the Zelda and Mario teams are hard at work. And you know us, Chris, we don't talk about things until we are confident that they are in a place where we're going to be able to deliver on them in relatively short order after talking about them. So you have to know that those teams are working hard and there will be stuff that will be delightful coming out. Meanwhile, hopefully titles from third parties like Call of Duty will be fun for you. Also, hopefully you're going to be able to enjoy titles like Animal Crossing and Wii Music for what they are -- very different experiences. Experiences that'll be social, and you'll play with a group of different people.
Wired.com: At the same time, isn't E3 the time to do this? Aren't you really addressing the hard-core gamer crowd when you come to E3, even now?
__Dunaway: __I think we're addressing both. Absolutely the hard-core gamer crowd is critically important to us.
__Wired.com: __Because there are kids at home watching this press conference on TV. Or glued to their monitors, popcorn in hand. And they're waiting for, here's the new Zelda, the new Mario, Kid Icarus, whatever.
__Dunaway: __Absolutely, but we announce what we have that's ready to share. And one of the things that I love so much about Nintendo that I think is certainly unique in the scope of the companies that I've been involved in is that we don't release stuff until it's perfect. And so we don't talk about stuff until we've got a great degree of confidence that we're close enough to release it. So we announce what we have. And we're really proud of what we have coming in to this holiday season. Animal Crossing with WiiSpeak, which is a completely different take on the social experience, being able to have a room full of people talking to another room full of people. And *Animal Crossing *is a franchise that's been really enjoyed and embraced by a lot of serious gamers. And Wii Music, which is just such vintage Nintendo. Because it's taking something that's a genre that everybody thinks they understand and twisting it on its ear, and doing it in a really fresh way. It's all about creativity, all about improvisation rather than mastery.
__Wired.com: __Have we seen the extent, now, of Nintendo's 2008 holiday lineup?
__Dunaway: __You have seen the extent of Nintendo's 2008 holiday lineup. Also items that we didn't talk about yesterday, like Wario Land: Shake It. Which is a great franchise for the core. It's Wario in all his gross wonderfulness, shaking the Wii remote, and that's going to be tons of fun.
Wired.com: I did get a chance to play that, and that's coming out in Japan pretty soon so I'll grab that version. So that could be really interesting.
__Dunaway: __And even Super Mario Sluggers, which is certainly an expanded audience title, but what core gamer doesn't love Mario and baseball and finding out which combination of characters are going to do what kind of crazy things in the field?
__Wired.com: __So moving on to the Wii MotionPlus controller. You've got 20 million Wiis sold worldwide. So there's 20 million people, and then let's extrapolate out to the controller's release date of Spring 2009. A whole lot more people will have a Wii by then. Now you're introducing this controller that developers are really going to want to use to build their games around, but how are you going to get it out to people? Is it cheap enough, for example, that other developers could include it in their games like Nintendo is including it in Wii Sports Resort?
__Dunaway: __I can't comment on that, but I can comment on what we will do to get it out -- we're packaging it in for free with Wii Sports Resort, and I'm sure that we'll market *Wii Sports Resort *in the way we've marketed *Wii Fit *and other products, and try and make that title as successful as possible so we get it out into peoples' hands. And then we'll also sell the accessory separately so that people can do the sword battles and all those fun things. I would certainly expect that between now and next spring you'll start to see other developers coming up with great applications of it as well. It's not too hard after interacting with the game a little bit for your mind to start running a mile an hour thinking of other things it could be used for.
__Wired.com: __If I was a developer, and I had a game that was in development that could potentially make use of this, I'd want to delay it until after this device came out. Just as an example, Sega is doing Samba de Amigo, which is a maraca-based music game. With two Wii MotionPlus controllers, you could play the game identically to the original arcade version.
__Dunaway: __And Star Wars Clone Wars. Hopefully there will be rapid second versions.
__Wired.com: __Is* Clone Wars* going to use this controller?
__Dunaway: __Not this first edition, but to your point, I would certainly expect that people would be following up with some of those titles with a second version very rapidly to take advantage of the Wii MotionPlus capabilities, because it is a heck of a lot of fun.
__Wired.com: __So the WiiSpeak microphone is not packed in with Animal Crossing. Why sell it separately?
__Dunaway: __Because it's not essential to fun gameplay, to have the microphone. You can have a lot of fun with the customization and creativity aspects of Animal Crossing without exploring the community aspects. But for people who want that rich community experience, the WiiSpeak really enables that. So it's a deepening of the experience, but not necessary.
__Wired.com: __Have you thought of doing an optional bundle package for people who want to buy them together?
__Dunaway: __We haven't started planning that yet. We certainly will be merchandising it together, we'll be communicating it together. I think there may be opportunity for soft bundles or things like that.
__Wired.com: __So let's talk about downloadable games, Virtual Console. Right now, looking at the Japanese versus American Virtual Consoles, Japan gets about four games a week, four new retro games to download. Whereas in America it's been pared down to about one, maybe two games a week. What's the reasoning behind this decision?
__Dunaway: __It's just filling the pipeline with games, particularly for WiiWare. There's lots of games in development, so it's not an explicit decision to only release one a week, it's taking a while to get a full pipeline of games that are ready to be released.
__Wired.com: __Well, at one point, we had four games hitting every week in the first year of the Wii's life cycle. That hasn't slowed down in other territories. But it really has been ratcheted back in the U.S., and I'm trying to understand what's behind that decision process.
__Dunaway: __We've been shifting to a little more focus on WiiWare. As I understand it, we're trying to get as many WiiWare games out into the marketplace as possible, and waiting for more of the games to [pass the checking process] and be ready to go. So it's been a bit more of a focus on WiiWare, but we'll continue to do Virtual Console as well.
__Wired.com: __So this is really becoming more of an issue now with the U.S. with more WiiWare games, because WiiWare games are in many cases larger than Virtual Console games. And people like me who downloaded a lot of Virtual Console games in the beginning, a lot of WiiWare games -- my Wii is full. It's full. And not only is it full, but all of the methods that Nintendo suggests to deal with this -- delete and redownload, for example -- are aggravating, take a lot of time, and make me buy fewer WiiWare products. So the people who are buying per capita the most of these downloads are running out of places to put them, and it's turning them off of buying more. So what is Nintendo going to do to fix this?
__Dunaway: __We don't have any storage solutions to announce at this E3. I know what we do in my household, which is to focus on the new game, because we're always kind of excited, "OK, what's going on WiiWare this week?" So we delete the old games that we're not using, knowing that they're always going to be there if we want to go back. It seems to be kind of a trade for a lot of gamers, that they want the newest, the freshest and they'll play that for a while.
Wired.com: I've also noticed that Nintendo as a first party has really taken a step back with WiiWare -- is Nintendo really trying to make WiiWare something for third parties to use?
__Dunaway: __We saw WiiWare as a chance to open up the platform and make it more accessible to a broader range of developers who might not have the resources to create big, packaged games. With a belief that, the greater variety of games, there's more of a chance that there will be something in there that appeals to everyone. It's pretty neat to see something like Defend Your Castle sitting there alongside something like* Pokémon Ranch*.
__Wired.com: __What are you going to do as the service starts to fill up with games? At this point, it's still easy to navigate, but.... The point being, Microsoft recently announced that they'd start deleting games from Xbox Live Arcade. Is this something that Nintendo would consider?
__Dunaway: __I think one of the main tools for folks is to have people fill out the [Nintendo Channel] survey, rate the games. Particularly someone like you, who is very astute. Your opinions about how fun the game is, who the game's going to be useful for -- that's terrific information for someone like me. So really, allowing the community the opportunity to give each other insights about the games, is hopefully going to be the way that the cream rises to the top.
Wired.com: I find it interesting that DS players are now 50-50 male/female.
__Dunaway: __Particularly if you compare it to PSP, which is a very, very different mix. One of the things our announcements yesterday communicated is that we're committed to a wide variety of titles on DS. So you've got Grand Theft Auto, which will go after one audience, and Cooking Navi, which will go after a completely different audience.
__Wired.com: __Have you seen Grand Theft Auto on DS? Have you actually looked at the product, seen it running?
__Dunaway: __I have not looked at the product. Have you?
__Wired.com: __No. No, because all we've seen is a logo thus far. See, you guys ask things like, "Aren't you excited about Grand Theft Auto on DS?" And I can't even picture that in my head. Without seeing it and understanding it, no, I can't get excited about it.
__Dunaway: __And you know how they are, they don't release demos.
__Wired.com: __Yeah, they're very Nintendo-y in that way.
__Dunaway: __We're pushing on them for Penny Arcade Expo. That would be really nice, to have something to show for PAX.
__Wired.com: __What are you thinking for PAX?
__Dunaway: __We'll do Wario, do Kirby, do ...
Wired.com: Rhythm Heaven. Do Rhythm Heaven.
__Dunaway: __Yeah, because we have not really talked about or shown that.
Wired.com: You have not, and had you had that in your press conference, you would have said, "Rhythm Heaven," and you would have heard somebody in the audience go "Yeah!" and that would have been me.
__Dunaway: __Oh, darn. I would have put it up there.
Wired.com: I played the Game Boy Advance game that only came out in Japan. Incredible. Incredible game. I've got the Japanese version of this on order, too. Really amazing.
__Dunaway: __What's so fun is that you find your whole body moving in time to it.
__Wired.com: __You have to, to keep the rhythm.
__Dunaway: __I can picture the commercials for it already.
__Wired.com: __Rhythm Heaven is your under-the-radar, Professor Layton-style announcement for this E3. Speaking of which, we need more Professor Layton.
__Dunaway: __Yeah, I agree. I played all of Professor Layton, it's a fantastic game.
__Wired.com: __It's interesting that while DS sales in Japan have tapered off a little bit, the U.S. sales and European sales are going like gangbusters -- does this affect whether we're going to see a hardware update for DS?
__Dunaway: __Certainly the fact that, year-to-date, DS hardware sales are up 12 percent, and DS software sales are up 29 percent, and we just did this advertising campaign going after women 18 to 35 and doubled the sales of Brain Age and* Nintendogs* and Mario, which have been out there for years in some cases, suggests that there is still a lot of mileage in the DS platform.
__Wired.com: __Speaking of which, I think that Tuesday was the first time in recent memory, and maybe ever, that one of the platform holders' press conferences was run by a female executive.
__Dunaway: __I've had other people say that. Just tell your blog that I'm really a genuinely smiley, nice person. Because people think I'm fake, smiling up there. I'm just not! It's just me! I am who I am.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com
See also:
- Live Blog: Nintendo's E3 Press Conference
- Exclusive Grand Theft Auto Coming to DS
- Hands-On: *Rhythm Heaven *Coming to America, Awesome
- Nintendo: New Mario, Zelda in Works For Wii
- Hands-On: Wii Sports Resort Not Easy
- Imagination Theater: The Nintendo Conference That Coulda Been