¡Wake up EOL~Multi! [REV] Wi-Fi en la ensalada

Entrevista a Ohara escribió:TYP: I’m here with Mr. Ohara and his translator, Bill Trinen. Firstly, what aspects are you most proud of regarding the Nintendo WiFi Connection?

Ohara: Well, I think given that this is a service that we spent a year in planning and development as Mr. Iwata mentioned in his speech yesterday, and yet in a very, very short period of time we’ve already hit that million player mark and really seen a lot of success in terms of the number of people playing on the service and the number of times people are playing on the service. It is probably the one part of it that has me the most proud.

TYP: Are you surprised at how good some of the players have become online?

Ohara: (laughter) I was actually quite surprised by the people playing Mario Kart.

TYP: How did your previous experiences with things like Japan’s Mobile System GB help you in the design of Nintendo’s WiFi Connection?

Ohara: Well, the Mobile System GB was a fee based service, so from the sense of scope, it was a very large and complicated system that we had to create to enable that fee-based service. And, because of that, it required a great deal of investment. So while we have learned other things from that process, this time around once we knew we’d be offering a free service, it didn’t need the extra parts of the service to accommodate the fee based portion of it. We were able to keep costs down. And the problem is that when you’re offering something like something like a network service, if the costs of maintaining that service are too high, then obviously you can’t support that service over the long term. Because we were able to keep costs down, it was very important for Nintendo WiFi Connection.

TYP: Speaking of costs, what is the performance and the fiduciary costs for first and third parties to include Nintendo WiFi Connection in their games?

Ohara: Actually, to that end, we created a very easy-to-use library of tools for Nintendo WiFi Connection so that any kind of developer who’s developing a game for Nintendo DS that has multiplayer will easily be able to use those tools and take that multiplayer and make it compatible with Nintendo WiFi Connection. And we’re distributing that library free of charge to developers so that on the development side of things it’s actually not very expensive for developers to make a game WiFi compatible. And on top of that, actually, in its first year of service, for the third party, we haven’t been collecting any fees from them for operating on the WiFi Connection service.

Nota Bidule: solo el primer año ojo.

TYP: Will those tools be expanded upon as you come up with new utilities like tracking on Metroid Prime Hunters?

Ohara: Yeah, actually, we are increasing libraries and adding functionality. Also, you mentioned Metroid Prime Hunters, but you may notice Tetris is also going to be offering web-based ranking over WiFi Connection. So we’re including that type of functionality and we’re actually developing additional functionality on some other areas right now.

TYP: Will we ever see Voice-Over IP during gameplay?

Ohara: Oh, yes, it’s technically possible, so based on the game design, if a game creator out there wants to include Voice-Over IP in their matches, I think they would be able to include that.

Nota Bidule: interesante, es cuestión que se lo propongan, dependerá de los recuersos exigidos a lo mejor.

TYP: You mentioned one of the benefits of WiFi Connection is that it’s cheap so you can offer it for free; is there a way to allow a subscription service for more complicated things like massively multiplayer games?

Ohara: Well actually, Nintendo is already declared that we won’t be charging any fees whatsoever for any Nintendo DS software that plays on Nintendo WiFi Connection. And so, in that sense, that’s not just where the short term is, that is going forward as well. But, at the same time, we’ve also said that if there are third parties out there that want to do something more elaborate, and charge for that service, then we’re not going to prevent them from doing so. But the one caveat to that is—kind of goes back to the reason why the Nintendo WiFi Connection has seen such rapid growth, especially when compared to other online services—and that’s that the driving concepts of the Nintendo WiFi Connection really enabled that growth. And those concepts are: (A), that it’s simple, it’s easy to use; it’s essentially the same as doing global wireless play in terms of the setup; and secondly, this concept of comfortable online place to play. And that comes from the analysis we’ve done on the past services and identifying these certain psychological barriers that have prevented the casual gamer from playing online. And that includes things like verbal abuse and online chat rooms and the fear of whether or not a casual gamer has the skill level to play on an online space with the hardcore gamer. And so, because we’ve been able to offer this service that allows people to play together in a way that they’re happy and they feel comfortable playing in that online space, Nintendo WiFi Connection has seen this dramatic growth. Because of that, any third party publisher that is able to offer a subscription-based service for a game they’re developing as long as that game adheres to the concepts of Nintendo WiFi Connection, then I think we would allow it.

TYP: Why are current games limited to four players online?

Ohara: It has to do with the Nintendo DS wireless functionality in terms of the rate in which it’s exchanging data. And it depends on the software. In many cases, four player becomes the upper limit of what it’s able to do simultaneously when communicating between the DSes over WiFi.

Nota Bidule: entonces podemos suponer que por Wi-Fi nunca veremos juegos con 16 jugadores.. 8)


TYP: The slower rate is because of battery issues, correct?

Ohara: When the DS hardware itself was designed, of course anytime we design a hardware system, [b]we have to balance the functionality with things like battery life. In that sense, with the Nintendo DS incorporating the WiFi technology, in order to maintain the robust battery life that Nintendo DS has, we made decisions about what type of wireless functionality we use and we included 802.11 WiFi compatibility. The rate of that is 2 megabits per second. So when you’re doing things in real time over WiFi at 2 megabits per second then four players roughly becomes kind of a limit. But it would definitely be possible to have more players for something that has less intensive real time interaction.

TYP: Why does the DS not support WPA encryption?

Ohara: It was also something that was finalized during the design of the hardware itself. And with WPA there’s some additional cost involved in making it compatible with that. But, also, if you just look at the quality—we had 128 bit WEP encryption, it’s very secure. And so in that sense it was determined that because it meant our security standards that would be expected out of our system that supporting WEP would probably be sufficient for most consumers. But that was something that was determined by the hardware design group.

TYP: Is Nintendo pursuing a WiFi-only strategy with Revolution as well, or might we see a wire connection for people who want a more stable connection?

Ohara: Well it would have to be something that unfortunately we’d have to make a final decision on depending on the conditions of the marketplace and what people are expecting for their home consoles.

Nota Bidule: judiciosamente, no contesta 8).


TYP: When designing WiFi Connection did the DS’s limited non-volatile memory pose some problems?

Ohara: Well yeah, there were some challenges and I’ll be talking about them in my speech later today. But, particularly, they were with the main memory of the DS. We found that with the original TCP/IP protocols that we were trying to implement that they consumed too much of the memory and ultimately we swapped them out at a very late stage in development with a different set of tools, a different TCP/IP library that would use less memory. So, there were some challenges. (laughter)

TYP: How might the flash memory in Revolution help aid you to avoid these frustrations?

Ohara: Unfortunately we’re still in the process of finalizing a lot of positions on that. So, there aren’t any real concrete answers I can give you right now, but I guess E3 would be the time to talk about that more.

Nota Bidule: Evasivo como un pez en el agua nuevamente 8)

TYP: What kind of downloadable content can we expect for the Revolution (laughter) or is that an E3 answer as well?

Ohara: We’ve already talked about the Nintendo Virtual Console that’ll be going with the Nintendo Revolution and the types of downloads you’ll be able to do with that. Of course yesterday we announced that the Sega Genesis games will be downloadable on the Virtual Console, as well as the Hudson games for the TurboGrafx, so, at this point, that’s the type of downloadable content that we can talk about. And I think, as Mr. Iwata hinted at yesterday as well, the idea of that next Tetris concept, that next simple game that’s very fun, is also something, in theory, that could be developed for the Virtual Console download.

Nota Bidule: Vaya, me veo a Tetris DS disponible en la lista de juegos para bajar.. pero tampoco contesta.

TYP: So we can hope to see new games through Virtual Console?

Ohara: I think that there are possibilities for that.

Nota Bidule: ¡Ha soltado una! venerado seas Ohara-san...

TYP: How do you balance making WiFi Connection easy to use while still providing features that advanced users might expect from a system?

Ohara: It’s kind of a mixed scene up until now. I think that it depends on the style of gameplay and I think that we’ll continue to see some games that, like Animal Crossing, people will only want to play with people that they know, but we’ll also see other games that people who want to play with everyone in the world and so it’ll become a balance of applying the right functionality to the software in terms of how that balances with game design and the desires of how people will play on them.

TYP: Do you worry that people will come to demand online play with their games? We kind of saw it a little with Xbox where reviewers and players would say, “This doesn’t have online play, so it’s no good.” Are you worried that that might happen?

Ohara: Well, of course I want to try to have as many WiFi games as possible (laughter). I’d like to see WiFi compatibility with all titles, if we could.

TYP: Would you like Pictochat to be WiFi enabled, too?

Ohara: (laughter) I think that’d be fun. I’d like to do that.

Nota Bidule: Mm.. seguro que está proyectado.

TYP: Well, thank you very much, it’s been a pleasure.