GDC Recap: Disrupting Brains
The keyword that was bandied about during Satoru Iwata's speech at the Game Developer's Conference was "disruption". Through the DS, Mr. Iwata illustrated how Nintendo was disrupting the mechanistic game industry by creating new and unusual games, some which may not even have been considered as games if Nintendo hadn't pushed the idea that maybe, just maybe, exercising your brain was just as fun as exercising your trigger finger.
Brain Training formed a large part of the presentation, with Iwata providing some background info as to how the game came about and how successful (1,7 million units sold) it's been ever since Nintendo and floaty-head Dr. Kawashima put their heads together. Getting people together was an equally important topic, with Iwata noting that simplicity and ease of use was a priority with the Nintendo Wi-Fi service, no doubt a contributing factor to its rapid growth rate that has surpassed even Xbox Live (though to be fair, the latter and very different service isn't free and requires a larger initial investment).
To round off the DS part of the conference, Nintendo showed off some footage of The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, a brand new and cel-shaded adventure for Link and his eternally in peril princess pal. We were instantly enamored by this one, but we're still quite disappointed that no new information regarding the US launch of the DS Lite surfaced. Oh well, E3 should tell us how accurate wildly incorrect our predictions were.
For more coverage on Iwata's keynote, check out Chris Grant's ramblings over at Joystiq by clicking the "Read" link.
