Wii U

Earlier, when Takeda-san talked about wanting to put an element of play, you addressed that by adding a feature where during Wii U Chat, you can draw pictures and write letters using the touch screen of the Wii U GamePad.

Yes. We wanted something you could do while you were chatting to make conversations more fun. You can use the Wii U GamePad to draw and write, so this was an idea that kind of came up naturally. It's actually a lot more fun than you'd think. You're not often able to doodle on someone's face in real life, but you might have the urge to try. When we tried it, it broke the ice, and it spurred conversation. Normally you can never doodle on your bosses face, but we were able to do so during development. In fact, when you're doodled on, it actually makes you happy.

It makes me excited thinking about cases when a grandparent would use it with his or her grand child. Did this feature take shape like the way it is now since the beginning?

Actually, at first we wanted to make a simple, whiteboard feature. You would press a button to switch modes to have the whiteboard appear on the TV screen, where both sides could draw pictures on it as they liked. But when we tested it, because there was a white screen in front of you it was a bit much for customers who weren't confident in their drawing skills, and it was even more so because you were being put on the spot by the other end watching you.

Also, you would be able to express more if there were more colors and pen types, but people became too preoccupied in drawing, and slowed down conversation. Interaction with the other side lessened, and the sense of being together got thinned down where you felt uncomfortable and not able to look at the others' expressions.

Oh, that would be the opposite of "family happiness".

It was. On the contrary, by placing an image in the background in advance, the pressure of feeling like you're forced to draw something lessened than when a whiteboard was shoved against your face. Some people were of the opinion that it sounded difficult to draw on top of a moving image, but when we tried it out, we found all sorts of amusing things to do with it, like have the person move along with what you were drawing.

With the way it is now, it feels like you're even able to really express your true feelings that you're a little embarrassed to put in words and speak out.

Yeah, even if it's just a 'thank you', we learned from experiences that it gets across to the recipient differently whether you communicate by your voice and your expressions, versus your handwriting and your expressions.

During development when we were in a serious conversation with NLG, the mood became unpleasant. It became difficult to cut in during middle of a conversation, but by doodling quick snippets of something on the screen by hand, the mood eased down, and we were able to become more forgiving. This was something that actually happened.

And being able to see people actually drawing it out in real time leads to the fun too, I think. On a topic related to this, the staff from Swapnote¹⁷ was involved on this capability, right?

Right. The director (Daiji) Imai-san¹⁸ and (Yu) Kitai-san¹⁹, who designed it, were both involved in this, so it does feel like you're really touching it. 17. Swapnote: A communication tool for the Nintendo 3DS system released by Nintendo in December of 2011. Comes pre-installed in the SD cards of the Nintendo 3DS system from May 2012.

18. Daiji Imai: Network Business Department. Director of Swapnote. See Iwata Asks: Swapnote for more information.

19. Yu Kitai: Network Business Department. Designed the stationery for Swapnote. See Iwata Asks: Swapnote for more information.

When you draw, the line glows a bit, and seems to be a little hazy. Why did you decide to make it that way?

That was Kitai-san's idea. At first it was an ordinary flat line, but I requested that it needed to be visible on every kind of background, and that's what she came up with, and strangely enough, it's always clearly visible.

Oh is that so. I curiously thought, "This pen shows up so well against a real image." The generation that grew up with print clubs* have a different way of thinking. (*Editor's note: In this case a "print club" or "purikura" refers to instant photo booths that have been widely popular in Japan since the mid 1990s, especially among girls. As opposed to a standard photo booth, these "print club" booths allow users to take photos and personalize them with a built-in software to add things like fancy frames, fluorescent handwriting messages and cute stamps before the photos are printed out.)

Kitai-san really understands just how a color combination will look in a photo, and that sort of things.

I feel like that's the sort of attention to color coordination that you might not get with an all-male team. (laughs)

(laughs)

The strange thing was that while we'd all been drawing pictures with the flat pen, when we switched it to the new glowing pen, we all started writing messages instead of drawing pictures.

Something about it makes you want to draw something that's connected to the image in the background, rather than doodle a random picture.

Right. I think it's combined with the kind of images you can only get with Wii U Chat to create a tool for communicating feelings.

Are there any other tools, besides drawing?

Actually, we had all sorts of ideas from people inside and outside the company, but in the end we decided not to add any of them. We tried out all sorts of different ideas, but it would have actually taken away the simplicity and how it's so easy to understand.

Was it becoming sort of like, "What is this software trying to do here?"

Right. (laughs) So we decided to go back to our original concept and make things simple, and really just concentrate on being able to chat with someone and see them while you chatted. So what we have now is what we were left with after we did that.

So the capabilities are simple, but this is the result of having tried all sorts of things and being selective about what you chose.

There were a lot of capabilities that had a lot of impact, and that I thought were really good, but I tried to think about what was really necessary when it came to using this long-term as a part of your daily lives.

There certainly are a lot of features that people use once, but then never use again. And if that might make things more complicated and make people shy away from it, it's better to just decide not to add anything unnecessary.

That's right. We do want as many people as possible to use this, after all.

What about you, Watanabe-san? Do you feel that Takeda-san's ideal became a reality?

Yes. I think it was realized in a pretty nice way, too. I think back when we were working with Nintendo 64 when Takeda-san was first saying how he wanted to have a TV phone as the theme, creating a communication environment was a bit too much of a long shot in terms of the hardware we had back then. But these days even our grandparents have the Internet at as matter of course, and if you have even one Wii U, you could be chatting with it that very day. I think that's the best part of it.

I think the important part of that is, like it was included in Takeda-san's initial wishes, that you don't have to download it from the Nintendo eShop, it comes with the console to being with.

That's true. At an Ask Takeda-san How He Feels Meeting, he said is that the function needed to come on the console because in order for it to work, both people need to have it.

The way it works is the day you buy it, when you connect to the Internet, it automatically downloads the Wii U Chat from the network.

That's right.

I think one of the reasons that TV phones up to now didn't become widespread is because people thought you had to clean your room, but because the camera is in your hands, you can turn it any direction you want, it's made so that you don't have to show anything you don't want to. And on top of that, being able to project the recipient onto a large TV screen created an interesting balance.

That's true. Because the camera is handheld, it will show the person holding it in extreme close up, and it's interesting because for example, other family members might peer over and appear on the screen from time to time.

If you set it on the Wii U GamePad Stand or the Wii U GamePad Cradle, you can chat without holding the GamePad. I really hope that people don't just use it one on one. I hope they use it in a group.

That's very true. I hope it comes in handy not only for families, but for people who can't get out much, like mothers who are busy with young babies. There are so many ways to use it by connecting two living rooms via Wii U Chat.

There really are so many situations you can use it in. I hope it will become apparent that it was worth our hard efforts having built this in as one of the standard features. Thank you so much for coming today.

Thank you very much.