Reggie - Wii U is not a tablet, form factor near final, third party support, Wii U demos staying demos and more

A portion of a VentureBeat interview with Reggie Fils-Aime…

VB: Were there some developments in the air that also influenced the design, such as the popularity of the iPad?

RFA: We were well in development before the the birth of tablets and, again, to be clear, this is not a tablet. It is a connected experience to the base console. It talks with the base console. It interacts with other Wii accessories whether that is a Wii Remote Plus or a Wii Balance Board. So it has very different functionality compared to a tablet.

VB: And how far along is this prototype toward the final hardware or the box itself?

RF-A: In terms of the form factor of the console, it is quite near final. Similarly the form factor of the controller is quite near final.

VB: It looks like you are able to put development platforms in their hands earlier than ever before. In the past, the third parties got the platforms much later than Nintendo’s own game developers. I don’t know if that means a deliberate strategy change?

RF-A: It’s a kind of deliberate strategy change. Our goal is always to try to encourage third-party development, get development tools to them as quickly as possible. As you know, the more conversations you have externally, the higher potential you have for leaks, the higher potential for information to get out. So we felt now is the right time to share information broadly, to set ourselves up for having more developers with that equipment in their hands. That will ideally lead to a stronger launch line-up and also a stronger grouping of games in that three months after launch, six months after launch. Those windows are just critically important to a system’s effectiveness.

VB: You showed those Wii U game concepts. Can we expect those to become games?

RF-A: You shouldn’t expect them to turn into games. What I mean by that is we’ve been very clear that these are interactive experiences. We use E3 as a way to gauge our feedback. So certainly there may be some experiences that turn into games, but others have been purely experimental.

One of the things I would be clear about is that if you look at the history of the original DS, or you look at the history of the Wii, one of the things that is clear is that in order to truly drive a hardware platform, there needs to be a series of compelling experiences that generates strong momentum. For DS, it was the combined screens for games like Brain Age. For Wii it was Super Smash Bros. and Wii Fit.

As we look at Nintendo 3DS, we think the sequence is going to be the eShop, Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and then the drum beat of five new titles with Star Fox, Kid Icarus, Mario Kart, Super Mario 3D, and Luigi’s Mansion 2. Those will drive significant momentum for the 3DS.