During his delivery of the keynote at last week's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata noted that more people were playing games -- 62% of the U.S. population now vs. 45% in 2007. In a private interview later in the day, Iwata suggested that means there are plenty more consumers for Nintendo to reach, and he also continued his nudging of Apple and its game-filled App Store.  The numbers on percentage of people who play games, how does that help you at Nintendo?I just do not look at only the current game players but also potential video game players, those who are not playing with video games yet. I am always thinking about any possible ways of how can I make them so they will at least take a look at video games.  Is the Nintendo 3DS a platform that might attract those who haven't played before because of its 3D aspect?I think that feature is great, so that the people at least are going to think for a while, well, I don't know about that, but it is interesting so I would like to take a look. For example, (Nintendo of America President) Reggie (Fils-Aime) mentioned today during the presentation the idea to introduce people to the 3D movie trailer on 3DS. Well, some people might not be interested in video games but most of them are interested in movies and watching some 3D movies, I would guess. There are the people who never care about video games at all who do not want to even touch the video game machines, but for the sake of watching some movie trailers they are now approaching video games and are kind enough to have a hands-on.  More GDC coverage: Game Hunters' GDC highlights.The GDC awardwinners.Nintendo 3DS updates.  And then as we explained we have several internal applications for the Nintendo 3DS, the (augmented reality games), the Mii Maker or Face Raiders, these applications do not require gaming skills for the owner. We had that kind of experiences before when we introduced people to Brain Age and the Nintendo DS and when people started playing Wii because of the interest in Wii Sports and Wii Fit, although many of them had not played video games before at all. Only after they had actual experiences with video games many of them said actually video games weren't so bad things at all. I really hope we can reproduce that kind of situation again with Nintendo 3DS. There is an expression in Japan that you literally have to "taste it" before you say you don't like it. The feature of 3D is a strong weapon for us to solicit attention to the 3DS system.  You touched on the downloadable games for smartphones and other devices in the keynote. Were you suggesting there is a watering-down of quality occurring?I was not mentioning anything about quality or differences in quality at all. Even among the downloadable games there has got to be some high-quality software, and even among the games for dedicated game machines there has got to be some software we cannot call high-quality. The one thing we really wanted to stress was whether or not the platform holder has the mindset or the motivation to keep the high value of the software. Nintendo is not only a hardware platform holder but also the software publisher. We really want to maintain the high value of the software. So, from the very beginning, Nintendo has always thought that the content is the most important thing. That is why Nintendo has been operating very carefully to never hurt the value of the software. If the platform holder itself is not developing or producing software, their primary concern tended to be the quantity rather than the quality, which actually is not going to be a good thing for those who are developing software. Our message today was to be aware of the situation.  How does that tie into the idea of craftsmanship that you touched on?Looking back at the history of 25 years in the video game industry, when we started these projects were very small, and because of that we were able to take care of very minute details, and then we were able to brush up on some things to the very end. Today, circumstances have changed around video game creation. Many have become huge projects that require huge amounts of money. That does not necessarily mean high-quality software, necessarily.  In interactive entertainment, a very small thing can make a very big difference in the end, especially when you are at the final completion stage of the entertainment software application. Whether or not you will be able to brush up on some minute details may dictate the final joy of the product. I think one of the reasons why Mr. Miyamoto's software tends to be appreciated by many people around the world has something to do with this particular point. It is very important.  Another comment I made was about the specialization of developers. The industry tends to have a less amount of people who can see the overall project, and unfortunately we have not had the general tendency to create the circumstance where each person is able to do that.  Is there an example you might give of details you felt were enhanced at the end of a project that shows the importance?Nintendo launched New Super Mario Bros. Wii at the end of 2009. Just about six months before the launch, I heard from them that the game was not going to be really fun. But during the very final completion period what had been changed are very minute details. That is not something very notable for the gamer, but for example, it sometimes had to do with level design, in other words, where the enemy characters should be positioned in the stage and specific changes in the movement of these enemies or total terrain of these levels.  If we were able to take several pictures of the design before and the design afterward, most people could not tell what changes we made. So it's more the actual feeling that you can get only by having the hands-on and how you touch the controller and have the sense how do you like it. Sometimes people will say, "OK, single-player mode, it's OK but it's not good with the four-player mode or vice versa."  But we could make it during the final month or so that both would be fun and get people to say, 'I want to play that one more time.' Luckily Mr. Miyamoto is not only a game designer but also one of the management. If he himself can tell unfortunately it's not ready to go onto market, he can say, "No, sorry the schedule has changed." Of course in a lot of companies if the creators are not the business people there tend to be arguments. Business people must think primarily about the financial aspect of the company, while the creators want to always brush up on the quality, so there have got to be conflicts all of the time.  So it's in the very final moments of the video game creation that will dictate if we can include the magic that will enchant game players. That kind of craftsmanship under today's development circumstances might be lost.  What do you have to say about the 3DS launch in Japan?On Feb. 26 in Japan, we made a shipment so we sold more than 400,000 units in Japan. We understand that almost everything is gone. I say almost everything because almost always the retailers are keeping some stock for the pre-sale. We are virtually sold out, for which, of course, I am very thankful.  Before the launch, the biggest concern we had was (that) we cannot convey the 3DS through the TV or Internet or print advertisement. But now that the Nintendo 3DS is on the market we are hopeful that the current owners are already spreading something really good about Nintendo 3DS by having very good experiences.  You announced that a new Super Mario game was in the works for the 3DS. What does that mean for the 3DS?Since it is on the Nintendo platform, many people tend to look forward to the launch of something Mario. Ever since Super Mario 64 (on the Nintendo 64), there's been one challenge our creators at Nintendo have been facing and that is the difficulty for the game player to hit the floating block in the 3D while it used to be very easy with the 2D Mario. It is difficult for the game player to recognize whether one object in the game screen was upfront. It is difficult for a game player to recognize the height of an object in the 3D world.  Due to those general kinds of things, we have had some big challenges to express game terrain in the 3D world. But once we started the 3D development for the 3DS, our developers were very hopeful that the day would come that they would have a strong solution to that. As the result of these experiments, our developers have come to the anticipation that probably we will be able to solve a number of the issues that we have been facing in the 3D world in the 2D screen.  So what does a new Super Mario game mean to Nintendo? We'd like to create the new dimension of Super Mario and we would like to showcase what 3D means in the 3D world. We would like for Mario to represent the new dimension of Super Mario. We would like Mario to become the symbol to represent how the video game can change.
Q&A: Nintendo's Satoru Iwata  - Game Hunters: In search of video games and interactive awesomeness - USATODAY.com - Game Hunters: In search of video games and interactive awesomeness