ARMS/Zelda: BotW were made on the same floor at Nintendo, devs discuss if ARMS could become an eSport

A portion of a TIME interview with ARMS producer Kosuke Yabuki and art director Masaaki Ishikawa...

TIME: At the Game Developers Conference this year the Zelda development team spoke of using a data aggregation tool to chart and scrutinize different play styles. How much of Arms was designed around similar aggregation tools versus straight player feedback?

Yabuki: Arms and Breath of the Wild are made on the same floor at Nintendo, and we are able to use things that the Breath of the Wild team found useful. But it's important for us to choose the right tools for the game. In development of this game, we looked a lot at the results of the battles, the overall picture of what character matches well with what character and what arms go up well against what arms. That information comes from humans fighting other humans.

But we also use the artificial intelligence in the game to match A.I. against itself and look at that data. And of course the players who participated in the Arms test this last weekend, we looked at that to check and see if there are any balance issues.

TIME: It's a fascinating claim, because to date, motion controls have existed somewhere around the intersection of novelty and imprecision. It sounds like you're essentially positioning Arms as the first hardcore motion control game, or maybe even first motion control eSport.

Yabuki: I think that's a great take, and I actually think Arms might be the first game that has such depth with its technique in its motion controls. I think it would be great if Arms were to become an eSport, but it's not quite clear yet whether Nintendo will go down that path and become a proper eSport. It's not a certainty yet that Arms will be a huge hit with people. We'll see how many people play. But if it does go down that route, we'll see what Nintendo as a company does with eSports.