Continued 2
Our early meetings were just brainstorms and didn t produce any solid ideas. But at that time, people in Japan were beginning to read a new book and do its brain exercises. I noticed this, and thought it might be a good game idea. Even Mr. Mori, our chief financial officer, was doing the exercises himself and convinced me to go forward. Then I consulted with Mr. Miyamoto, and when he got excited, too, I asked the task force to tackle the job.
Several of them said that just exercising your brain might not be enough. Could there be a way for players to measure a brain age? I thought this was a great idea. People would be eager to compare their scores. But in fact, no work at all could begin until we came to agreement with the author, Dr. Ryuta Kawashima. Since we were both about the same age, I decided to try to meet with him myself.
His schedule was very busy, but he agreed he could find just one hour on just one day the very day that the DS was launching in Japan. Not only was his university a long distance from our offices, but the meeting itself lasted not one hour, but three.
We showed him a prototype brain training software and explained how his work might translate to our medium. He was enthused, and we started exchanging ideas. The doctor offered to demonstrate evidence on how the prototype software was stimulating brain activity. He asked if he could borrow one of the team members I had brought along from Nintendo. I said, Certainly.
You might find this unbelievable, but his assistant then entered with something that looked like a metal bowl with wires attached to it, and then he turned it upside down, and placed it on my team member s head. It looked like a sci-fi movie from the 1950 s. The doctor showed that he could determine that the prototype game was changing the amount of blood moving across the surface of the brain. This was an important moment for all of us.
m sure some people at Nintendo wondered how I could spend so much time on the kind of meeting on the very day of the DS launch, but I think it turned out to be a good idea.
Meanwhile, back at Nintendo, we also benefited from some good timing. Internally, we have one team we call the Development Environmental Group. They had just finished a library of tools for voice and sound recognition for DS. Simultaneously, work on hand-writing recognition was also in progress.
When they began this work, we all thought these functions would be useful for the DS someday, but we had no real idea how. Then suddenly, it seemed to Mr. Miyamoto and me they would be a perfect match for this brain game.
By now, I admit I was getting very enthusiastic about the project. But at first, I don t remember that the development team felt quite the same way. I assembled a group of nine people and told them that since this wasn t a very complicated programming they should be able to finish the first game in just 90 days And that included the year-end holiday period. I could tell they were not happy, but at least with such a short schedule, they couldn t waste much time complaining.
My bigger concern was how the market would react beginning with retailers. Few people inside Nintendo believed they would place very big orders the game was just too different from what they knew. Maybe it wasn t even a game at all. So at this point, one member of the sales team suggested a new rule. When our salesmen showed the software to retailers, even before business was discussed, the first 15 minutes of every meeting must be spent with the buyers trying the brain exercises themselves.
Oh, when they heard this, the retailers hated the idea! They were disgusted, but they had no choice. So they started playing, and we could only wait to see how they would react.
And how did they respond? Well, at this point I think I will take a risk and see if we can reproduce those first reactions right here on stage. In order to do that, I d like to introduce Bill Trinen from Nintendo of America s localization team a person who has spent months with Brain Age. He ll walk us through a demonstration, and invite a few friends.
[Bill Trinen, from Nintendo of America s localization team, demonstrated the unique game play of the new Nintendo DS game, Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day, among a group of volunteers]
Thank you Bill (Trinen), Will (Wright), Geoff (Keighley) and Jamil (Moledina). I think we have now discovered people who are determined to improve their brain age! And of course, that is the secret appeal of this game.
