Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto takes the stage at the 2007 Game Developers Conference

Posted March 9, 2007 at 06:30 AM by Doug Berger

Section: Gaming, Console, Miscellaneous, Portable, Trade Shows

Earlier today, Nintendo’s Miyamoto took the stage at this year’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.  Here’s the run-down of the keynote…

Miyamoto talked about the evolution of his wife interacting with Nintendo game consoles.  He refers to this as the “Wife-o-Meter.“  The more they can get the wife’s to interact with the console, the more successful the console is.  He starts talking about how back in the day when Tetris, Mario, and Link were hot stuff, his wife was not affected at all.  He then moves on to Nintendogs and says that raised the Wife-o-Meter a bit.  And then Brain Age - and now gaming is a part of her everyday life.  Now she is challenging him in her favorite games.

Moving on, Miyamoto talked about how great of a job the three main teams (hardware, software, and third-party relations) did at collaborating on the Nintendo Wii.  He talks about how the decision to move forward with the Wii Remote (AKA Wiimote) was made possible by all of the above.

Lastly, he spoke about Risk.  Miyamoto speaks of how the Gamecube was “really a half-step” into the whole idea of making Nintendo mainstream.  They tried to make it even easier than ever before to have new gamers pick up the controler and actually play.  And finally came the Wii, the biggest risk of them all.

Miyamoto moved on to the communication involved in the Wii.  He mentions how character creation is not a new idea (Mii), but he is working on a new Mii channel that compares Miis you’ve created to hold popularity contests among users/your friends.

He finishes up saying how it’s just a matter of time before everyone becomes a convert.  “If we can convert my wife, I believe we can convert anyone.“

Read the full play-by-play [Gizmodo]