The Nintendo 3DS (above, being held by a cheerful Shigeru Miyamoto) may be a little hard to picture as the "Nintendo S" -- but the 3D visuals, it turns out were not part of the original project concept. That's according to Hideki Konno, group manager of the 3DS hardware project at Nintendo and also the producer of games like Nintendogs and Mario Kart Wii.
"The first time I heard from [Nintendo president Satoru] Iwata and Miyamoto about this was just after I wrapped up Mario Kart Wii and got started working on DSi Sound." Konno told Famitsu magazine in an interview published this week. "They showed me this piece of hardware which later became the 3DS and said 'Here's what we're working on right now.' Nintendo's hardware and software teams work in the same building and we've always treated interaction between the two sides as important, but having software people go into the hardware-dev front lines like this never really happened before now. They wanted a closer relationship this time, and that's why they wanted me to coordinate the overall project. It was a new challenge for me, and I was eager to pick it up."
While Konno didn't go into detail on the hardware prototype Iwata and Miyamoto showed him, the device apparently lacked 3D graphics at first. "I became involved with development starting in 2008, but at that time, it didn't have 3D visuals," he told Famitsu. "From Nintendo's perspective, they've released 3D Hot Rally [a Japan-only 8-bit game that used 3D shutter glasses] and the Virtual Boy; they've had a history of experimenting with 3D visuals. With this system, you could say the timing was just right for us. It was the right time to start thinking about using the latest in high-tech and try out glasses-free 3D. The technology we got to demo was really impressive, and starting in early 2009, we began to think that it was time to bring it to games."
The prototype didn't have the motion and gyroscopic sensors the current 3DS has, either -- in fact, "[t]hose sensors were actually put in pretty late," according to Konno. "We officially went with them just before E3 last year [in June]. The boat had really left the port by that point -- the hardware team had the final specs and just had to work it all out. Then, in the midst of that, Miyamoto said 'This isn't enough; we can really change things if there's a gyro sensor in there.' We had a prototype for the sensor already, so we got everyone together to try it out, and the conclusion we came up with was 'Well, if we can do things this fun with it, I guess we've got no choice.'"
The 3DS was Konno's first experience driving a hardware project, and it was most certainly a learning experience for him. "It was a difficult experience, but an important one to have," he said. "Working in software, oftentimes you have the situation where there's a bad game that could become great if you can find a single great new idea for it. With hardware, you just can't turn the tables that quickly on a project. You can come up with a new idea for a game and get a basic prototype running in a week. Miyamoto will say to you 'Just give it to me in boxes' -- it doesn't need to be pretty; you can just have a bunch of boxes onscreen if it accurately portrays the idea. Mario Kart began life as a bunch of boxes onscreen, even. You can't wing it like that with hardware -- you need to think everything out before making it. That was very hard for me to get to grips with."
What drove Konno during the 3DS project? The desire to create something new and surprising -- a common theme for pretty much all of Nintendo's hardware platforms. "This is a larger theme, something that's not limited to the 3DS, but we are constantly thinking about ways to surprise our customers as much as possible," he said. "That theme is always there even as our hardware and software changes. With the 3DS, the 3D visuals are hard to picture unless you actually take the device in hand and try it out. The surprise factor here is difficult to relate in words, and that's why I really want people to try it out for themselves. There's a lot of other functionality inside as well, from the motion and gyro sensors to the 3DS camera, and I think game makers and gamers will come up with some pretty interesting ideas for it."
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