Can you tell us how you both were involved with the Nintendo Switch, and how the development started?
Takahashi: When development for the Switch began, it didn’t even have the codename “NX.” But at that time, there were discussions taking place between the late president Iwata (Satoru Iwata, former president of Nintendo), Takeda (Genyo Takeda, Nintendo’s “Technology Fellow”), Miyamoto (Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo’s “Creative Fellow”), and myself. The four of us began by looking at the entirety of our new hardware plans. When the discussion turned towards who should be at the center of the project, we decided to call in Koizumi.
Around what time were these discussions taking place?
Takahashi: That was about 3 years ago. You tend to discuss what sort of hardware you want to create whenever you’re on the verge of moving into something new, but Nintendo is always coming up with new ideas, so we had numerous materials and concepts already prepared. We decided the direction we wanted to go with these materials and the person we wanted to lead everything around the same time.
And that’s when Mr. Koizumi joined.
Koizumi: I was on the Tokyo production team at the time, but one day they suddenly told me I was to come to Kyoto. There, the late president Iwata told me to “create a tag team with Kawamoto” (Kouichi Kawamoto, the Nintendo Switch’s general director). I still clearly remember what he said back then, “I’ve chosen the most un-Nintendo-like people”. (laughs)
There's a lot more behind the link. The interview is very in-depth. ---
Past Nintendo hardware did not go for specs alone, but placed an importance on balancing it along with new gameplay methods. Have you taken into account the performance of competing companies’ gaming hardware and PCs this time?
Takahashi: Our main focus was with the implementation of the Switch’s core concept: how it would %u200Bswitch%u200B from playing in TV Mode, to Tabletop Mode, to Handheld Mode. It had to be graphically capable enough in TV Mode, but it had to be capable of playing in handheld mode for long enough as well. We made it an important goal of ours to find a good balance between those two aspects, so I think our team had a much different mindset than that of other companies.
It certainly seems so. A console focused entirely on maximizing its graphics would probably only last 30 minutes on the go.
Takahashi: If it even lasted that long (laughs).
And could you tell us about how the Switch got its name, despite the Wii being followed by the Wii U? I imagine there was a lot of heated debate regarding it during your development discussions.
Takahashi: We had numerous discussions about it.
Koizumi: The late president Iwata initially asked us to “Do something new”, so we had it in our heads from the start that we had to move away from older names like the Wii and Wii U, or the DS and 3DS. Our line of thinking was that all aspects of the system must be drastically different from past hardware, even down to the name.
Takahashi: And that went for the software development side as well.
Koizumi: Yes. In that sense, we would be changing many different things. For example, we were always thinking about how we could revise the development environment, the way development teams were structured, and even the mindset of the developers themselves. This had more of a connotation of “change”, but we decided it would be more appropriate to call it the “Switch”, as that had the nuance of a replacement. So we chose that name out of all of the various candidates.
Takahashi: And there was no shortage of name candidates. We must have had thousands.
Thousands! Did the ideas come from many different people?
Koizumi: We told everyone what the new hardware would be like, and asked them to come up with names that would fit well and be easy for people to understand. And we ended up with thousands of potential names.
Takahashi: We ended choosing “switch”, a word that means something. It’s not a made-up word like the “Wii”, so it was also a 'switch' away from that (laughs).
Was decision on the final name made unanimously?
Takahashi: There were a lot of different reactions to it
Koizumi: When we explained it, they went “you took all this time to come up with?”
Takahashi: But in the end, we made sure it felt right to the overseas staff. We decided to use it because it would convey new changes from new hardware, and a 'switch' in gameplay.