Game Development Giant

To be honest, somatosensory is not a new idea in home game consoles.

This idea has been around since the time when Nintendo and Mars Entertainment were competing for hegemony more than ten years ago, but it was not so successful at the time.

Is now the time?

Many people have speculated this way, even people from Sony and Sega. It is impossible for them not to pay attention to the actions of Mars Entertainment and Jester. Since the beginning of the glory of video games, as a The direct creator of this era, Jester has never failed.

However, it is unrealistic for Sony and Sega to suddenly transform and develop their own somatosensory products.

For this brand-new technology, a huge amount of time and energy is required. If they are allowed to transform now, it will be much more difficult than when Jester re-planned Dreambox 3 for The Hero. In fact, Dreambox 3 was only functional in the first place. As for the improvement, there are no changes in the architecture.

But now asking them to re-develop a new game console that is compatible with somatosensory devices is almost equivalent to asking them to redesign and re-architect. Not to mention how long it will take to develop this somatosensory device, it is just a re-architecture. In time It is too late to do so. Withdrawing from the competition for the next console era is not a path that these two hardware manufacturers can choose.

Moreover, the most important thing is whether the experience can make players feel that it is something that can excite them, or it is not necessarily something.

It does not mean that some outstanding things, outstanding ideas or creativity will be loved by players after they are actually turned into products.

This requires a process.

Innovation can indeed expand the market the fastest, but risks also exist. While it allows you to quickly occupy the market, it also means that if your innovation cannot be recognized by players, you will lose the market at the same speed. . It will be you too.

The scale of the consultation meeting held by Mars Entertainment for the next-generation console this time was not large. Only a small number of media and a small number of players were invited. Of course, although it was a small amount of media. But these media are also the most influential in the gaming industry, including traditional paper magazine gaming media and emerging online gaming media.

Moreover, Jester's GAME, the most influential magazine media in the entire gaming industry, has gradually begun to shift its focus to website media in recent years, and the magazine has begun to gradually reduce its size.

On the other hand, Electronic Game Monthly, which has only been around for a few years, has been developing rapidly in recent years. Basically, the sales volume of the magazine has gradually equaled that of GAME.

Of course, this is also because GAME has changed from the previous semi-monthly magazine to the current monthly magazine.

This consultation meeting was hosted by Jester and Shigeru Miyamoto, two co-producers of Super Balotelli Galaxy. Jester mainly talked about the new console. After all, adding motion sensing equipment to the new console It was Jester who made the decision from the beginning, and Shigeru Miyamoto was responsible for answering some questions about the game.

Actually, the reason why I insist on adding somatosensory devices to game consoles is not just a gimmick as many people said before, just like releasing the light gun in the NES. It looks good. But in fact, playing It sounds boring - we originally added light guns to our Dreambox, but the final player feedback was not that successful.

At that time, I thought why did it fail?

Why are somatosensory devices on arcades so successful? Home consoles, at that time, were actually an extension of arcades. Many players even played Super Balotelli and Avengers at home for the first time. When they were playing the game, what they were thinking was that I could finally play the arcade at home, which is awesome!”

So, although our attempts at that time, Nintendo's attempts, and later Sega's various attempts at home motion sensing devices did not achieve very good results, I still have no idea that this system can achieve success on home machines. I feel discouraged by the results. Because this is the most perfect game interaction method. There is no one. It is a temporary failure. I think it is just that this technology is not mature enough and it cannot do what we game designers can do. For this A standard for how a genre of games should do big things.

Yes, I have imagined what a successful home motion-sensing game could do more than ten years ago.

First we have the idea of ​​the game, and then we start developing the somatosensory equipment that can make such a game. Is this what we have to do?

A lot of people may still ask, why are we doing this?

The truth is actually very simple. As someone who has developed many games in the electronic game industry, supervised many games, and participated in the design of more game developments, I deeply understand one thing. Players are willing to buy a console. It’s not because of how great the performance of this console is, but because the games on this console are what they want to play.”

Games are the foundation of the gaming industry, and consoles are just a tool. Consoles that get better and better and have better and better performance are just to allow developers to add a lot of their own to better and better performance that was not possible before. idea.

Before, when our new host was officially determined how to develop it, colleagues who had been silently developing somatosensory equipment within our company for ten years told me that our current technology has already It can completely achieve the level of the motion-sensing game I originally envisioned...

When Jester said this, someone raised their hands to ask questions.

Jester smiled and called the other person's name.

They were all familiar reporters. The reporter also asked with a smile: Is this the work of the Super Balotelli series?

no.

Surprisingly, Jester denied this claim.

The emergence of the game Super Balotelli Galaxy can only be said to be an accident. It is not the motion-sensing game I originally imagined. It's just that as so many years have passed, my understanding of motion-sensing games has become deeper. I bought one, so I came up with such an idea - and one more thing I want to explain is that a motion-sensing game console will naturally have motion-sensing games that match the game console, and our sales strategy for the next-generation console is, Every motion-sensing console will be equipped with a motion-sensing game, which will be given to players for free.

And this free motion sensing game is what I originally envisioned, and what I think a successful motion sensing game should be like.

After Jester finished speaking, the reporters and players at the scene were amazed.

Can you tell me what kind of game it is?

Naturally, people will ask questions like this.

Jester did not hide anything: Actually, there is nothing to hide. Now I can say that this game is actually very complete. After all, the development of somatosensory games for so many years is based on the ability to perfectly The premise is to run this game that I envisioned back then. In fact, why do I insist that there will eventually be a market for somatosensory games.

The reason is actually very simple, that is, I think this kind of game that requires physical cooperation is a human instinct to play, just like sports. What is the earliest game of mankind? It is sports.

So, I was imagining at the time. An excellent motion-sensing game must have the charm to make players move involuntarily. Then there is nothing more appropriate to use motion sensing than to directly make a sports game. So , this is a sports game, a very special sports game. You will see a demonstration of this game in a while, and I can also say with certainty that you can experience it for yourself at next year's E3. To this game, this whole new way to play.”

After Jester's answer came to an end. It was Shigeru Miyamoto talking about some information about Super Balotelli Galaxy to everyone present.

Of course, this game is still under development, and many things are uncertain, so. There is still relatively little that can be shared with players and the media. Even because the game is under development, some things are impossible to reveal at this time. Of course, even so, Miyamoto still has a lot of content. Share it with everyone.

For example, why he made up his mind in the first place. Join Jester's development team to develop the game Super Balotelli Galaxy together.

I think many people may not know that I have been a loyal fan of this series since the game Super Balotelli came out!

At the beginning, Shigeru Miyamoto revealed a relatively private piece of news about himself. He said that he was a fan of Super Balotelli, which surprised many people.

Yes, I was still at Nintendo back then, but my personality is actually quite childish, and Super Balotelli, a game completely made for children, simply goes deep into my heart. Before I also imagined making a game purely for innocence and fun, but there was no chance, and Super Balotelli is exactly that.

So, I had the idea of ​​making a Super Balotelli myself. Later I learned about BOSS's idea, and then I discussed it in detail with BOSS, and personally experienced the boss's words that had already completed most of the work. In this motion-sensing sports game, I was completely attracted by the new game method of motion-sensing - yes, motion-sensing is indeed not a new concept, but the motion-sensing on Dreambox4 is definitely such a thing. It’s something you’ve never seen or experienced before.”

The feeling was amazing. I had countless thoughts at that time, and there were countless voices inside my body telling me that I wanted to participate in the development of this game.

So, I made a decision that you thought was very surprising at the time. Believe me, after you personally play with our new body feel, you will definitely understand why I made that decision. Decide.

Because this kind of experience is really irresistible.

Finally, the demo was carried out with the straightforward name Dreambox-Sports, and the game being demoed was tennis.

This is also the most suitable demo game.

Of course, this is also the first time that the motion capture camera and the special remote control controller are displayed in front of the players. Players even saw this long remote control controller and a wristband worn on Jester's body. It still feels magical when it's on the wrist. They don't understand why this weird-looking handle needs a wrist strap.

Jester naturally knows many people’s questions.

Actually, at the beginning, this controller was not equipped with a wristband, but when we were testing it internally, because the game was so good and players were too involved when playing, this controller often It would fly out and hit the TV hard, and sometimes the screen of the TV could even be broken.

“We were troubled by this situation at the time, so we tried to find a way to solve it, because it really affected the experience. We imagined a lot of controller shapes, but in the end we found that this shape of controller can’t be used for motion sensing games. Control, especially in some games, is irreplaceable and the most popular, so we still thought of this somewhat stupid way.

Since this thing can easily fly out of our hands, why don't we just tie it to our hands - so this wristband came into being.

This can be regarded as a slight joke made by Jester before the official demonstration of the game.

But this thing is true.

If you want to perfectly present the charm of a somatosensory game, you must be in a world built in 3D. This is a game where all modeling is 3D... With Jester's explanation, his demonstration officially began. , the originally noisy crowd suddenly became quiet, and then stared unblinkingly at a TV connected to a sealed box in the center of the venue.

Then, everyone seemed to have seen a world they had never been exposed to before, with extremely shocked and incredible expressions on their faces.

Dreambox4 will change the future of gaming!

The next day, as a game website that has just emerged but already has a very wide influence, IGN's homepage was occupied by such a title, and the content was that the editor of IGN went to the headquarters of Mars Entertainment to participate in this event My thoughts after coming back from the next-generation console consultation meeting. (~^~)