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Reo Yonaga talks Nintendo's strategy, and more
A portion of a Gamasutra interview with Q Entertainment’s Reo Yonaga…
GS: Shigeru Miyamoto said he wanted to make game that everyone’s moms can play. That’s Nintendo’s current strategy.
RY: It’s good that they have a set group of users. You see children and mothers fighting for the DS in trains. To avoid fighting, in the end the moms buy their own, and because the moms are housewives and have spare time they get better and better and in turn the children respect them for that. There aren’t that many things that parents and children can do together nowadays.
Back in my time, we cut bamboo and made bows, taketonbo, and other toys. I did that when I was a child. It took a lot of time and didn’t turn out very well when I made them myself, but when my dad made them, the toys turned out perfect, so I really respected my dad.
These days you can buy almost everything, and where in the world would you even find bamboo? Yeah, if you give it some thought, it’s interesting how games have become a form of communication.
GS: Yeah. I talked the Animal Crossing producer and he’s always at work and never gets to talk to his kids, so he had an experience where he would go play something on Animal Crossing while he was testing, and send them a mail to his house about things that he had done, and they would play and send a reply. They actually got to communicate that way.
RY: I’ve met the guy who came up with the iMode structure before. He’s a middle-aged man. Back then, [cell phone provider] Softbank was still called J-Phone. J-Phone had a hip image and DoCoMo phones were seen as ones only used by old men. After hearing that comment from his own daughter, the guy set out to make a cell phone that would please her. That’s how iMode was created. It’s interesting how his daughter seemed to be what inspired him to start.