Nintendo of America's President Talks VR, Mobile, Zelda, and More

In an unprecedented move, Nintendo brought only one game to the E3 show floor this year, but they made that game count. The company devoted the entirety of its gigantic booth in the Los Angeles Convention Center's west hall to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the latest entry in the legendary game series and a launch title for Nintendo's upcoming platform, codenamed NX. It was the most searched for game from the show, and attendees had to wait about four hours in line to to try it, which is impressive considering there were more than 140 demo stations in the booth.

At the edge of that impressive booth, which looked something like a Disney World attraction, was a second floor of meeting rooms. Much to my concern, these second floor rooms swayed from side to side as members of the press and Nintendo executives walked up and down the stairs. It didn't feel super safe, but Motherboard had an opportunity to sit down with president and COO of Nintendo of America (and living meme) Reggie Fils-Aimé, so we braved the rickety structure. It's in one of these meeting rooms, bouncing around like we were sitting in the bowels of a ship, that we chatted about virtual reality, the Wii U, and the future of Nintendo. But before we got to that, I had some personal beef I needed Fils-Aimé to settle.

Motherboard: We're in the middle of a very heated debate at Motherboard. I have a coworker who thinks that the new Zelda is a science fiction game. I think it's a fantasy game. Do you care to weigh in?

Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aimé: It's fantasy. It's a fantastical universe. To me science fiction takes you down robots and mechanical things, versus living and breathing things. So I'm much more in your camp.

Okay, good. Thank you for saying I won this argument.

Eiji Aonuma, the producer of the Zelda series, told Wired yesterday that he thought that looking from the Wii U's GamePad screen to the TV was a distraction from gameplay. I think that's the most critical thing I heard someone from Nintendo say about the GamePad. It makes it sound like the defining feature of the Wii U was ill-conceived. Where are you with that?

If you look at the three separate home consoles and you count up the unique content that has been rated 8.5 or above from critics, and 8.5 or above by consumers, by far they are more on Wii U than on other consoles. Bayonetta 2, Super Mario Maker, Splatoon, Mario Kart 8, Smash Bros. It's a long list of games. In the end it was a system that we were able to bring stellar content to. Content consumers love. From that standpoint, I can't say that the GamePad was an ill-conceived concept. What I can say is that unfortunately we didn't persuasively explain the benefits of the entire system to consumers. And we did not have the breadth of third-party content, and that's why we will end this particular generation third out of the three systems.

The good news is that when we launch the next platforms, things change, and it's a whole new platform that is to be explained to consumers, that we will have very strong support for.

Is there ever top-down pressure on the design team to use certain parts of the console? Like "hey, let's figure out a way to make the GamePad more integrated into this game?"

No, it's always from the bottom-up, and it's different from developer to developer. We believe that empowering the development team to use whatever elements of the system they want fundamentally leads to more creativity.

What is the strategy going forward with third parties?

In terms of third party support, it really is a simple business. You need to have a large install base that they can sell a lot of product into, you have to create a development environment that's easy for them to create content or to use their proprietary engines. Whatever they do, you need to fit into their development framework in as seamless a way as possible. The third element is we need to provide the backend infrastructure elements that allow them to maximize the revenue on their content. More and more publishers are relying on DLC and things of that nature to help monetize the entire investment. That's what we need to do. The good news is that we've built a very strong infrastructure. The DLC mechanics, our eShop, is second to none. We've invested a lot on our development environment. As we look forward to the NX, job number one is to create a large install base.

I noticed that the mobile game you're making with Ingress developer Niantic Labs, Pokemon Go, was a big part of Nintendo's E3 livestream yesterday. I'm wondering how big of a presence mobile Nintendo games will have here at E3 in the future. Is it possible that a year from now or two years from now you'll have tablets and phones on the show floor?

I think it depends on the content and the structure of E3. Today, E3 is a media, retailer, influencer-type of event. As such, it is difficult for mobile to capture the imagination of that group. Retailers [like GameStop, Best Buy, etc] don't participate. There are some years where it's challenging for us to capture attention on our dedicated handheld gaming devices. That's where we are with that now, but if the show changes somehow, who knows.

I guess another way to look at it is do you view mobile games as equals in the company. Is Animal Crossing on mobile, just as important to the company as a Zelda or Animal Crossing on console?

Our business strategy is to make our consumers smile utilizing our intellectual property. That's fundamentally something we want to do. We want to do it in four ways. Dedicated game systems, mobile, license merchandise [at this point Fils-Aimé pointed at his Nintendo-themed sneakers] and licensed entertainment best exemplified by our partnership with Universal Studios. All four are important, and so from that standpoint, the team working on Animal Crossing mobile is just as important as the team working on Paper Mario: Color Splash. They're all critical to executing our strategy.

Do you play a lot of mobile games?

I dabble in mobile. I download to see what happens. Mobile games don't capture a significant portion—they don't capture even an insignificant portion of my gaming time. My gaming time is spent on my Nintendo handhelds—of which I have three here—My Wii U, and then staying current with competitive content.

Where is the majority of mobile development and the thinking behind how Nintendo tackles mobile coming from? Is that coming from Japan, or the U.S., because they're very different markets in the way they play mobile games and the way they market them.

The main business unit driving mobile strategy is out of Japan. The good news is that they travel a lot, and they especially come here and spend time with the folks at Apple, the folks at Google. We got access to all the best information about the space. We make sure that our business unit in Japan sees all of this so that they're knowledgeable about the global market. We have some staff at Nintendo of America supporting this, so that also leaves another avenue for a North American perspective.

I've heard you say before that you don't think VR is mainstream enough for Nintendo to jump into yet…

Actually, the question was posed, "when will Nintendo jump into VR?" And my answer was "when it becomes mainstream."

Nintendo has such a great history of taking cutting edge technology and making it mainstream. Whether it's early 3D stuff, rumble, motion controls. Nobody was doing motion controls, then Nintendo did motion controls, and everyone followed and did motion controls as well.

Let me clarify that point though: Gyroscopic technology had been around for a while.

So has VR technology.

So has VR. But with Gyroscopic technology, it was important for us that the price of this technology come down so we could sell a controller at $30 dollars and it makes sense for the consumer and is profitable for us. That was the breakpoint for that technology to go mainstream. Same with touch screens. They've been around for a while and it got to the point where we could incorporate it into the Nintendo DS. VR will reach that breaking point eventually. The other piece that is important, is that you're going to need to have the content that will bring it to life. Today I saw a range of different VR experiences. Some still made me queasy. Some were not all that compelling. And I've seen them all and I've seen the best. To me, the product that Valve is putting out is one of the best. But it's expensive.

To me it's about who makes the game, or who makes the thing that makes you want to do VR. And I'm getting the sense from you that you don't see that content either, but in the past that content came from Nintendo. Is your design team exploring it? Is Aonuma, for example, playing VR?

Well, Anouma is busy finishing Breath of the Wild [laughs]. That's his number one priority. But again, because we see ourselves in the entertainment space, our developers experiment with all forms of entertainment. They're voracious consumers of video content. They're voracious explorers of theater and museums. We work hard when Shigeru Miyamoto comes to the U.S. to give him a different kind of experience, something he hasn't seen yet, just to keep challenging his creative mind. Mr. Miyamoto has seen VR experiences, and so again, as a creative content company, we explore a wide range of different things, but in the end we're also a business, and for us, it's thinking about investing our time and effort here for a financial reward that makes sense.

So it hasn't sparked anything within the company yet?

I can't say.

How did Nintendo manage to keep details about the NX relatively under lock while PlayStation and Microsoft leaked information about updates to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One?

You'll have ask them, but when we come up with an idea, there are other companies that can try to execute that idea, so we work hard to keep our ideas close to the vest. We have our leaks as well. Company executives like myself hate it when it happens. We've been fortunate to keep NX close to the vest. You'll hear more soon, and part of the reason for that is that as more and more outsiders are involved with NX the risk for leaks really increases.

What do you make of the very elaborate NX fakes that have popped up online? Like the 3D printed one. When you see something like that, why don't you just squash it and say it's not your thing?

One of the things we know is that fans are passionate about this stuff. Even the most die hard Xbox or PlayStation owner is reading about Nintendo, so eyes are always on us. That's why stuff like this gets created. Part of the reason we don't rush out and squash a rumor is because what happens when a leak actually happens? So we've been squashing all of these other things and this thing happens and we don't squash it, what does that say? It says it's the real thing. That's why we always say that we don't comment on rumor and speculation.

Thank you for your time.