A portion of an NES interview with former Sunsoft dev, René Boutin...
NES: Nintendo announced that the Wii U is launching later this year. How do you feel about the console and its touchscreen controller?
RB: In general it looks really cool, but I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand Nintendo really knows how to create fun and innovative interactive experiences and the hardware is really interesting, especially the convergence of gaming and traditional entertainment media. The idea of a singular set-top box for gaming, movies, music and television has been envisioned for at least 15 years now.
On the other hand, I haven’t used my Wii or 360 in over a year. Most of my gaming these days is in short bursts on iPhone or iPad, so I can’t help but look at Wii U with an iOS bias. Nintendo is already behind the curve when it comes to tablet and touch gaming. I already have the convenience of linking my media devices and TVs via Airplay and Apple TV. And I’m used to a convenient digital marketplace where I can easily find and download games and apps for free or very cheap. It’s becoming really hard to justify spending $50 on a big budget story-driven game I don’t have time to play.
I believe the future of Wii U and other next generation consoles will depend heavily on its digital marketplace and maintaining a daily interaction with its players, such as through a mobile app or ensuring that the Wii U becomes the first device people turn on when using their TVs. Nintendo has to compete with a platform that evolves its hardware on a yearly basis and basically lives in my pocket. They might pull it off via their “device for all media” strategy and appeal to a mass market. Otherwise I see it ending up like the Wii—everyone has one but never turns it on.
NES: In the 90′s, you worked on both the Sega Genesis and SNES. What were the biggest strengths and weaknesses of each of these consoles? Also, which console did you prefer developing for?
As a video game artist and animator at that time, I couldn’t help but be more enthusiastic for the SNES. It definitely had the graphics advantage. Just off the top of my head, I remember it had a greater color palette, more colors for sprites, as many as three independently scrollable background layers, sprite transparency and of course the famous “Mode 7” rotatable/scalable background mode.
However you needed really talented programmers to push these features because the main CPU was rather underpowered and the system architecture really complex. We used to call it “fake 16-bit” because it was really a custom version of an 8-bit CPU hybridized with some 16-bit functionality. The Sega Genesis on the other hand had a true 16-bit processor, the Motorola 68000, despite being a couple years older than the SNES.
The SNES’s wavetable sound chip also gave it a big advantage with audio, and I still feel the controller was way more ergonomic than the Genesis one. So my clear favorite if it isn’t obvious already was the SNES!
RB: (Let’s not forget that this era also saw the Turbo Grafix 16, and the rich kids’ favorite mega-console, the Neo Geo AES.)
Full interview here
NES: Nintendo announced that the Wii U is launching later this year. How do you feel about the console and its touchscreen controller?
RB: In general it looks really cool, but I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand Nintendo really knows how to create fun and innovative interactive experiences and the hardware is really interesting, especially the convergence of gaming and traditional entertainment media. The idea of a singular set-top box for gaming, movies, music and television has been envisioned for at least 15 years now.
On the other hand, I haven’t used my Wii or 360 in over a year. Most of my gaming these days is in short bursts on iPhone or iPad, so I can’t help but look at Wii U with an iOS bias. Nintendo is already behind the curve when it comes to tablet and touch gaming. I already have the convenience of linking my media devices and TVs via Airplay and Apple TV. And I’m used to a convenient digital marketplace where I can easily find and download games and apps for free or very cheap. It’s becoming really hard to justify spending $50 on a big budget story-driven game I don’t have time to play.
I believe the future of Wii U and other next generation consoles will depend heavily on its digital marketplace and maintaining a daily interaction with its players, such as through a mobile app or ensuring that the Wii U becomes the first device people turn on when using their TVs. Nintendo has to compete with a platform that evolves its hardware on a yearly basis and basically lives in my pocket. They might pull it off via their “device for all media” strategy and appeal to a mass market. Otherwise I see it ending up like the Wii—everyone has one but never turns it on.
NES: In the 90′s, you worked on both the Sega Genesis and SNES. What were the biggest strengths and weaknesses of each of these consoles? Also, which console did you prefer developing for?
As a video game artist and animator at that time, I couldn’t help but be more enthusiastic for the SNES. It definitely had the graphics advantage. Just off the top of my head, I remember it had a greater color palette, more colors for sprites, as many as three independently scrollable background layers, sprite transparency and of course the famous “Mode 7” rotatable/scalable background mode.
However you needed really talented programmers to push these features because the main CPU was rather underpowered and the system architecture really complex. We used to call it “fake 16-bit” because it was really a custom version of an 8-bit CPU hybridized with some 16-bit functionality. The Sega Genesis on the other hand had a true 16-bit processor, the Motorola 68000, despite being a couple years older than the SNES.
The SNES’s wavetable sound chip also gave it a big advantage with audio, and I still feel the controller was way more ergonomic than the Genesis one. So my clear favorite if it isn’t obvious already was the SNES!
RB: (Let’s not forget that this era also saw the Turbo Grafix 16, and the rich kids’ favorite mega-console, the Neo Geo AES.)
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"Most of my gaming these days is in short bursts on iPhone or iPad, so I can’t help but look at Wii U with an iOS bias. Nintendo is already behind the curve when it comes to tablet and touch gaming. I already have the convenience of linking my media devices and TVs via Airplay and Apple TV. And I’m used to a convenient digital marketplace where I can easily find and download games and apps for free or very cheap. It’s becoming really hard to justify spending $50 on a big budget story-driven game I don’t have time to play."
and this is why he is a former employee...
I can see how devs who started off developing games during the 80s or early 90s, would favor IOS. I'm sure most of them look back fondly on the days when all you needed was a small team, a good idea and no pressure to make something sell over 2 million just to break even. A team of two could easily make a AAA game. And the IOS gamers aren't looking for the next generic FPS game. A lot of the IOS games are reminiscent of the 8bit/16bit games that I played growing up.
If I was a game dev I'd rather work on IOS too than be stuck making drudge for Ubisoft or EA. Or god awful waggle games for Nintendo.
No. He's a former employee because Sunsoft doesn't really make videogames anymore. Another company that was the victim of uber-budgets and HD graphics. At least according to wikipedia. They probably could have thrived on IOS.
Sunsoft used to make some of the best games back in the NES days, but really after the SNES came out I don't know what happened to them. Their games were some of the funnest games, with great graphics and music for the NES. The only SNES games I even remember playing by them were Looney Tunes licensed games which weren't great, especially compared to what they were making in the NES days. I did like Blaster Master Overdrive for WiiWare though.
I can't say I agree with him on the iPhone stuff though. I think $50 for an actual good game is a much better deal than 25 $2 crappy phone games.
You can get Flashback and Another World on phone games. You call that crappy? How many have you even played I wonder. This hate for iphone games is tiring. The majority of the games on any console are crap.
Would highly suggest reading the full interview and not just some random quote about the Wii U. Which by the way, not sure why people are taking what he said and turning it into something negative. He said the Wii U looked cool.
There's some neat little tidbits in the interview about how the gaming industry was like during the 90's, and why Sunsoft went bankrupt.
true, but the vast majority of crap games overall are on smartphones hands down
The way i see it is, you make time to enjoy the things you love doing. Gaming has always been a hobby. Just cuz joeblo doesn't have time to play games, doesn't mean others won't make time
You're exactly right. Unfortunately people only read headlines and comments to form their opinions.
This, I believe, should be a lot more important in anyone's life as long as you're happy.
Yeah, it's best that people get a full picture of things to reach a well developed conclusion. Otherwise, you're limiting yourself and being just left with an unsolved puzzle.
[sorry i didn't read all the replies before i written this, i'll have a look]
Most of that Apple and mobile stuff is BS
First of all, this employee is anonymous, it's probably an inexperienced mainstream just-got-out-of-college, and college is no place where you get such experience, he's just another victim of apple pysops marketing.
And no offense to him but this is just 50% of reasons, the other 50% of reasons why his arguments are pretty irrelevant is the fact that this that people would be quitting consoles and PCs in favor of iphone is such blatant ridicolousness that can only come out of michael pachter if you ask me,
Thirdly to add on top, Apple is just pretty integrated in western world and so this so called developer is pretty much all he can see is iPhones, and Samsung is pretty much driving over it all over the world, I don't even get it what's with them, they're supposed to know things in an out, and developers would know how shovel piece of junk apple products are.
I don't get it, many rookie developers have no idea of the other world, the CORE communities,
I don't even HAVE a smartphone, I don't even have a laptop. I have a 5 year old nokia phone, it's for calling, that's what PHONES are for. I'm not a crazy internet-addict that needs to update it's shmasebook and shmitter every 3 steps, only people who walk 10 Km aroudn the city every day do that. (this excludes business-wise use of social networking)
There was one guy that made great videos of WiiU in trade shows, so i though he was a more core guy, I contacted him asking for more footage of WiiU hardware, the backside of the controller so we can see possible model numers and FCC IDs there so we can track hardware details, and also higher original quality if he can upload it to mediafire or somewhere else than youtube ofcourse. I got a one of the most stupid replies ever, he said that "I don't do mediafire" and he only uses youtube but what the fuck he's about anyways, i looked on his twitter and it's just one of those bored people who have all kinds of these social pages who post nothing but useless babble, no business was associated with that account, telling me such BS. Then i told him that I wasn't meaining mediafire strictly, that I just picked a random upload site, and the guy still didn't get it, those people really think they're some kind of public service that they do some "professional work" that's silly... if you want research the way that actually makes difference, here's an example of what I focused on:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread. ... st41490721
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread. ... 44&page=77
I tried really hard to prove all those wikipedia nuts that took IGNorants so seriously about that 2011 Bluetooth article about WiiU on IGN.com - it spread as a consensus and I finally broke it, it's not the fucking bluetooth(too slow, not enough bandwidth), it's a high-speed protocol based on IEEE 802.11n. And you can all see the arguing going on the WiiU talk page on wikipedia ... yes i really don't like those "rules".
So people, fans, core guys, don't take opinions from casuals and mainstreamers seriously, and this should be a standard rule.
I would want to know what this developer was doing what was his EXACT JOB - maybe this guy is a beta tester. If anyone agree please let's feeback to NES to do that in the future, if they want to remain anonymous fine, but what's their job, what do they do.
Omg for gaming iOS and all that is just pure fail, watch and see the market there drown in free garbage in the years to come. Those platform are not a threath to game console or dedicated gaming handhelds in the long run, they still make an impact because it's new and cool, but that wont last forever and the market for games there will implode.
Sunsoft games were really hit or miss. They had some amazing games, but they also put out a lot of crap. But, as soon as I read that this guy cares more about ios games than wii or 360, I lost any interest to read further, and I dont care about his opinion.
@StewoxActually, this employee is not anonymous, the first line of the post is "A portion of an NES interview with former Sunsoft dev, René Boutin..."
What did he do? From the article:
Being an employee of Sunsoft during the SNES, Genesis era kind of means hes not a young just out of college kid.
@Emily Rogers
A Golf Course? Sunsoft went belly up because of an investment in a GOLF COURSE?
Yeesh.
Not a bad read though. It's always nice to see anyone from the ol' school side of business divulge some secrets, I've come to expect this stuff from Lost Levels' contributors or Jeremy Parish -- but it's not like they're the only ones allowed to do so.
Regardless of who's doing it, there's a certain charm to interviews like this.
"Otherwise I see it ending up like the Wii—everyone has one but never turns it on."
hes an idiot on this statement alone
Yah, at first i though it was intervew by GN .. for some reason.
--- weird, my post count is stuck at 1 ... forum bug
I didn't know THAT'S how SUnsoft folded, plus it was a good thing they didn't go with "Hoop it up" or they'd have bigger problems.
Thanks for the interview. It was a great read.
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