The Iwata Asks series up to now has largely focused on new products prior to their release, so I guess all of you who have worked on the development of Nintendo DSi XL thought on the launch date that I was not going to interview you this time. Actually, I had been thinking for some time that it wouldn't be a bad idea to conduct an Iwata Asks interview after hearing feedback from customers who had bought the product. I also thought that it might be an interesting experiment to communicate the intentions that lay behind a product’s development after it had been released. This is why, a little over a week since the release of the Nintendo DSi XL in Japan – I’ll go ahead and specify that today’s date is 30th November – I am going to interview the team behind this new console. Thank you very much everyone for joining me today.

Thank you.

Let’s start by getting you to introduce yourselves and briefly describe what your role was on the project. Let's start with you, Yoneyama-san.

My name is Yoneyama and I work in the Research & Engineering Department. The project leader was Kuwahara-san, who is sitting beside me. My role was to use my experience and to support Kuwahara-san in my meagre way from the developmental stage of the Nintendo DSi XL right through to the finished product.

So in 2007, after the large version of the Nintendo DS Lite was put on hold, development began for the Nintendo DSi. Kuwahara-san, it was your first time in charge of a hardware project, wasn’t it?

That’s right. And at that time, it had already been more or less decided that after we'd finished work on the Nintendo DSi, we'd be making a larger version of it.

Due in part to the fact that it was me who had put the large version of the DS Lite on hold, I said: "Let's release two versions of the Nintendo DSi - a large one and a small one!" But of course, it wasn't possible to work on both of them at the same time!

Of course, to have worked on a large and small version simultaneously would have been absolutely impossible! (laughs) But while we worked on the Nintendo DSi, while no one actually said it out loud, there was a feeling among the staff that we'd be working on a large version next. As the concept behind the Nintendo DSi had been to make it compact and portable, we were getting more and more keen on having a large version! (laughs) For that reason, we wanted to set to work on making it right away.

When you set about making a larger version, I’d imagine that you begin by considering the size of the screens.

Yes, we started by sketching out the size of the LCD screens on scraps of paper.

So you made sketches on some paper to ascertain the size that the screens would be.

Right.

That’s pretty lo-tech! (laughs)

We cut some card to the size of the Nintendo DSi XL and then sketched the size of the screen on there, saying: “Something of about that size might be good…”

At that time, I was in China preparing for the mass-production of the Nintendo DSi when I got an email from Kuwahara-san which was a scanned copy of some kind of rough hand-drawn sketch .

(laughs)

At that time, I had my hands full with the Nintendo DSi, so I didn’t have time to look at it.

So you were right in the middle of preparing for the mass-production of the Nintendo DSi when you were asked to take part in the discussion about making a version with bigger screens. Well, if it hadn't happened like that, it wouldn't be released now.

That’s right. Then at that point, we found we were able to use 4.2 inch LCD screens.

With LCD screens, the cost is decided by calculating how many screens you can get out of one large sheet.

LCD displays are originally manufactured on single large sheets of glass, which are then cut into individual panels.

Right. That’s why it’s vital to select a size that means you don’t waste any.

But even though we were able to use 4.2 inch screens, there were quite a few people who voiced concerns, saying: "Won't the image on the screen look grainy?"

Actually, at the time of the announcement of the Nintendo DSi XL, there were a lot of people who were incredibly worried that if we made the screens bigger while keeping the same resolution, you’d be able see blocky pixels on the LCD screens and the quality of the image would deteriorate greatly.

There were actually a lot of people who had the same concern within the company. So we had the LCD manufacturer come and give us a demonstration. After that, we realised: “It’s fine, there’s absolutely no problem!” Things also changed a lot when we decided to use the wide-viewing angle LCD displays.

Didn’t you consider using wide-viewing angle LCD two years before when you were making the large version of the DS Lite?

At that time, the cost of using it would have been prohibitive. But the price has come down in the last two years and it doesn't actually vary all that much in cost compared to LCD displays that don’t allow a wide-viewing angle. So we decided to use it this time and when we actually tried it, we found that even when you look from the side, you could see the screen clearly, which was really great.

So the large screen and the wide-viewing angle LCD display are both a really good fit for the Nintendo DSi XL.

Yes, they are.

So that was how you decided on the type of LCD display you would use. Did you then pass the baton to the design team?

We were actually moving at more or less the same time.

Those rough hand-drawn pictures would trickle my way and I’d be told to get on with designing them.

So when these roughly-drawn images trickled your way, what were your initial thoughts?

I’m really embarrassed to show it to anyone, but I’ve actually brought the first sample I made. Here it is...

So you just made the Nintendo DSi larger.

Yes, it's just a Nintendo DSi! (laughs) I tried out ideas like increasing the size of the corners to match the increase in size in order to give it a more balanced, softer overall feel but...

When he was making that, we actually came up with a proposal for the final design plan for the Nintendo DSi XL. But Fujino-san was unable to decide...

So you couldn’t make up your mind about which of the designs to actually use?

Right. I couldn’t make up my mind.

Personally, I wanted him to decide one way or the other without delay so we could get it finished as soon as possible! (laughs)

(laughs)

So, Fujino-san, the dilemma which you faced was whether to just make a larger version of the Nintendo DSi, which would mean that a lot of the know-how from the Nintendo DSi would already be in place in terms of development and manufacture. But if you’d done that, you would have risked people saying: "But it's just a bigger version!"

Right. The Nintendo DSi was completed, and as this was part of the Nintendo DSi series, I knew that you couldn't leave it completely unchanged. But at the same time you couldn't change too much... Knowing where to draw that line was extremely difficult.

But there was also talk of making the Nintendo DSi XL so people would want to leave it out on the tabletop. Simply making a bigger Nintendo DSi wouldn’t really have made people feel like doing this.

So we went to furniture shops and other places like that to do research into the kind of thing we wanted...

So finally you hit upon the idea of accentuating the top panel, which keeps with the style of the Nintendo DSi but also gives it a slightly different feel. The decisive factor in the end was the fact that this would make it more likely that people would want to leave it lying on the living room table, wasn't it?

Yes, that sense that if you left it on the table top, a member of the family would want to pick it up was really important.

When I first began working on the design, I made it so that the corners were bigger in order to give it a softer, gentler image. But when I did that, it ended up being enormous and seemed a bit unwieldy. I thought that I wanted to do something to improve this and found that by attaching a polished top panel to it, it retained that gentle look but was also smart and I aimed at a design like that. Furthermore, by making the top panel raised, I thought I'd bring out a sense that it was like a bowl full of water...

I see! So the image you had in mind was of the surface tension of water.

That’s right.

But this top panel was actually extremely tricky to make.

Because of my wilful insistence on this whim of mine, I ended up causing a lot of trouble for the rest of the team.

Before discussing what a struggle it was to make the top panel, let's hear more from Amano-san. At what stage does the design get passed across to the people working on the mechanism side of things?

The members of the mechanism team are involved from a pretty early stage. We actually started the task of slotting the components into the square box before the design had been finalised.

Out of interest, what sorts of problems are presented by enlarging the Nintendo DSi?

This time round, there was a lot of emphasis placed on making the console as fast as possible, so we started with a policy of not altering the basic structure. But we were concerned that by increasing the size of the console, it would adversely affect its reliability.

By making it larger, it becomes heavier which in turn makes it more likely to be damaged if it’s dropped.

That’s right. We spoke a little while ago about the large version of the DS Lite, but this time around the console has become larger still and has actually become thinner. Also, to keep the weight down, we initially started with minimal internal reinforcement so that we were extremely concerned as to whether or not the console would prove sufficiently robust.

Every time Nintendo makes a new portable game console, it is standard practice to carry out very rigorous tests wherein the console is dropped. It wouldn’t have done for us to say: “This time round, the Nintendo DSi XL is really big so we want to skip those tests."

Indeed it wouldn’t have done to say that! (laughs) So at first, we were absolutely terrified that the first time the console was dropped, it would be smashed to bits.

What were the results when you actually carried out those tests?

Given that we put together the console at an early stage this time, the impression we got was that it didn’t break up as much as we’d thought it would.

So that part went quite smoothly.

Yes, that part did! (laughs) The first samples were ready in around June 2009 and when we realised that it wasn't breaking up in the tests as much as we'd feared, we thought that we could carry on and all would be plain sailing…

That’s what you thought at the time... (laughs)

Yes, we thought that at the time! (laughs)

It had all gone smoothly right up to the initial samples being prepared, but then all of a sudden something occurred which threw a spanner in the works. I think that it’s best at this point to ask Yoneyama-san to tell us about his outstanding efforts in China.

Certainly. Well, as Amano-san mentioned, the initial samples were completed by around June but we weren’t yet at the stage where those could be directly made into the finished product. While we hand-make prototypes in Japan, mass production occurs in China.

In the past, there was a time when we would start mass-production in Japan before moving it across to China.

In recent times, the process takes place in China right from the stage prior to mass production when we make trial development versions, before moving on to the second and third stage of production. This time round, the aspect which entailed the most trial and error was the key element of the design - that is to say, the top panel. From the start, I knew it would be a tough one, but when we actually tried to make it, all sorts of flaws made themselves apparent and we were unable to rectify these, no matter how much we tried. The bitter struggle to overcome these problems began from around the middle of July and I was only able to make it into the Nintendo headquarters on one day during the whole of August! (laughs)

Well, I wasn’t able to come into office even once during the whole of August and September! (laughs) I only came back to Japan for the Obon summer vacation. Thanks to the top panel, I was with Yoneyama-san and Fujino-san in China the whole time.

Could you tell me what kind of problems were caused by the top panel?

Sure. Well, first of all, a crack appeared. Then, just when we thought we’d solved that problem, a pattern appeared in a strange place. Then just when we thought we’d solved that, we found that the reverse of the back panel, where it’s printed, was weakly attached which meant that by dropping it once, the top panel came off very easily...

While the top panel might look as if it’s a piece of transparent plastic that's just been stuck on, it's actually printed four times on the reverse, one layer on top of the other. We had problems with the thinner component in the ink being absorbed by the plastic.

The plastic vendor knew all about plastic, while the vendor for the paints knew all about that side of things, so we consulted with each of them individually a number of times and they cooperated with us in inspecting the problem. But because there was no one who’d ever put this combination together, there was no one who could offer us a solution.

So it felt like you were trying to solve a puzzle looking at issues such as just what type of thinner would work best with what kind of paint. You’d vary all sorts of parameters, see what the results were and then keep doing tests repeatedly.

No matter how challenging puzzles in a game may be, they’ve been designed so that you will be able to solve them at some point. But this was a puzzle where we didn't know if there was a solution or not, so to be honest, I was worried.

It was a puzzle where there were no guarantees that there was a solution, but you had no option other than to try.

That's right. And while we were of course able to make guesses, it was incredibly hard to get the correct solution. Furthermore, even if the product is fine just after it's manufactured, we have to check how it will withstand wear and tear over the course of several years.

So even if it’s fine at the time, it's no good if it starts to malfunction some time after the product’s been purchased. I told you that even though it was time-consuming, I wanted us to run thorough checks, recognising the importance of looking at how the product would be affected over the course of time.

Yes, you did. And just when we thought we’d solved that problem with the printing, there was a problem with the photo screen turning white when we took pictures with the Nintendo DSi camera.

So just when you’d cleared one hurdle, another one presented itself. It felt like you went through this process four or five times. How many top panels did you make for the development tests?

It was so many that I can’t remember exactly. I think we made between ten and twenty thousand.

Between ten and twenty thousand! Didn't you feel while you were working on this that you had lost sight of the exit?

The trouble started in early July and by around August, I was wondering: "Are we really going to be able to come up with a solution?"

But with the cooperation and hard work of the young engineers at our Uji Plant, I think that we were able to successfully come up with a top panel that reflected what we’d set out to achieve. So at the end, after overcoming so many problems, we got the sense that we might just have pulled it off.

So it took a whole three months to solve all of the problems.

The fact that we were able to overcome those difficulties was not due solely to our efforts - we owe it also to the cooperation of the engineers in the Uji Plant, which we're really grateful for. So when mass-production began and the first console was manufactured, although we were still too busy to do so at that time, we sent an email to all the people involved saying: "We've managed to successfully manufacture the first console today!" And we got a response right away from Kuwahara-san congratulating us.

That’s right! (laughs)

So while these three were going through this bitter struggle in China, what were you doing, Kuwahara-san?

I was back in Japan merely overseeing things. It wouldn’t have done for me to keep pressuring the team in China so I did everything I could to attend to their needs.

But whenever we make hand-held consoles, some kind of trouble always rears its head, doesn’t it? But this time, as there wasn’t any trouble...

Well, until part of the way through... (laughs)

Right, at least until part way through! (laughs) So when the trouble did rear its head, I felt that it was not different from other products we had made.

Well, it's not much fun to have to face these problems, is it? (laughs)

But if we hadn’t had the top panel to deal with, I’m sure it would have all gone smoothly. So people would get angry at me and demand to know what had made me come up with this design.

Er... Wasn't it me who said that? (laughs)

No, no, I’m quite sure it wasn’t you! (laughs)

(laughter)

So at the end of that bitter struggle, you ended up with the final Nintendo DSi XL. Can you tell me how you decided on the three different colour schemes?

Usually, whenever we’re deciding on the colour of handheld consoles, we come up with a lot of differently-coloured models. But this time around, because the pace of development was so rapid, we got the modeller to come up with twenty sample models. We were really at a loss as to which colour to go for, but we decided on the twenty colours and presented them. We were told to readjust the colours and what we finally proposed was natural white and dark brown.⁵

At first the plan was to go ahead with just these two colours, wasn’t it?

That’s because we were told that we could only mass-produce the console in two colours.

Then the sales department strongly urged us to make it in three colours.

Right. So we decided to add wine red to the colours. Thinking about it now, I’m glad that we made it in three colours.

It’s good that you made all that effort and came up with three colours. The appearance when you line them all up together changed a great deal.

Right. We decided upon natural white and dark brown very easily but we fretted a lot over which shade of wine red to use. We finally settled on the colour you see today after gathering opinions from colleagues.

If you speak to large-scale retailers, they’ll tell you that it’s not just older customers who are going for the wine red version but that younger women are also purchasing it.

I was a little surprised by that as I had assumed that younger women would go for natural white.

I think that wine red will actually prove a popular colour.

That’s right. But because we made it two-tone, the volume of work was doubled which was really exhausting.

Why did you decide to make the colours two-tone for this console?

I had wanted to give two-tone colours a try for the DS Lite and Nintendo DSi but because the hinges are quite complicated, it meant that it didn’t work very well.

But this time you were given full responsibility for coming up with the console's design so did you think that this time you definitely wanted to go with the two-tone colour scheme?

That's right. But as all three colours have rich tones, it was looking a lot like a product aimed at older customers...

It seems that there are a lot of customers who feel the same.

But as a designer, I wasn’t convinced by that.

You didn’t originally settle on those colour schemes in order to target older customers. The aim was that people would want to leave the Nintendo DSi XL in the living room or lying on the dining room table.

Right. If the colours were very bright, people wouldn’t want to leave the console out. I chose the colours after carefully considering which colour schemes would mean people weren’t averse to leaving it out. In order to do that, I paid a fair few visits to furniture shops! (laughs)

We also made it so that the hinges stop the screen in two separate positions so that people could play with the console resting on the table-top.

So if you open the top screen, it stops in two positions.

That’s right. With the Nintendo DSi, it only stops in one position, which is at an angle of around 155 degrees. For the Nintendo DSi XL, we added a further position of about 120 degrees. But this was actually quite difficult to successfully achieve. Getting the screen to stop in two positions even on a mobile phone...

Most mobile phones only stop in one position, don’t they?

Right. As mobile phones are products that you open and close a lot, factors like durability have to be considered and normally they are made so that they only stop in one position. But with the Nintendo DSi XL, the LCD screen has become bigger and the angle of vision has been increased so we wanted it to also stop at 120 degrees.

I see.

Furthermore, we’ve also made it so that the sound can be heard more clearly.

I've heard customers who’ve actually bought the console commenting on the fact that the sound is much improved. What sort of ideas did you come up with to achieve this?

The speakers in this console are actually identical to the ones used in the Nintendo DSi. But for the Nintendo DSi, the holes for the speakers were oblong...

There was just one small hole on the left and right.

That’s right. But this time round, after consulting with Fujino-san, we made it so that there were seven small holes on each side.

A very important aspect of this product was that it should be easy to understand so I wanted to make it so that you are able to tell right away that these are the speakers. In addition, because the screens are much bigger, we naturally wanted to also increase the volume for the audio. But since the speakers are the same ones that we've used up to now, we pondered how to make the sound louder. Then after a process of trial and error, we made it so that it sounds louder.

So even though the speakers are the same, the speaker enclosure⁶ has a greater capacity so we’ve been able to make it sound louder.

I played Daigasso! Band Brothers DX⁷ for the first time in a long time the other day and I did feel strangely happy. (laughs)

Indeed, it's become a richer gaming experience when the volume increases! (laughs)

One other thing I was happy about was the larger stylus that comes with the Nintendo DSi XL. I think that this is going to prove something of a sleeper hit. And reading the comments of customers on Club Nintendo, the feedback is indeed positive.

That stylus was actually made in secret.

So you made it without anyone asking you to do it?

That’s right. I thought that it was sure to prove necessary, so I made it while keeping it secret the whole time. But as there had been no decision on what size it should be, I did fret over how big to make it.

As this isn‘t something that slots into the console’s body, you were free to make it as big as you wanted to.

Right. But it was actually harder precisely because I had too much freedom. I was asking myself how thick I should make it and how long I should make it.

Well, Nintendo isn’t a company that designs pens, is it?

(laughs) That’s why I went to a lot of stationery shops at the time.

So after the furniture shops came the stationery shops? It seems that designers need to get out and about to gather their material, doesn’t it? (laughs)

Yes, they do. I finally came up with the design for the stylus after using a lot of different pens for reference.

It’s always difficult to make something thick out of plastic. With this stylus, you need to cover the core with the body, and then there’s also the tip. So you make it by combining three separate components.

I was also able to give the stylus a two-tone colour scheme to match the main console. Also, when I made the presentation about it to you, Iwata-san, you made the request that I should ensure that the stylus doesn’t roll.

Well, since we’re saying to people that we'd like them to play on the table-top, it would be really annoying if the specially-designed stylus was to roll across the table.

I thought that you were exactly right and when I spoke to the company that were manufacturing the stylus, I realised that it couldn’t be moulded without having two parts of the core protruding from the body. So I decided to make one of these parts into something like the clip of a pen. By doing that, I was able to follow through with your request and make it look like a pen. But just when I was feeling pleased with myself, people got angry at me again.

People got angry at you?

Well, because it looked like a pen, people were asking why it couldn't actually clip into your pocket. That's when I had to make clear that it wasn't actually supposed to be a pen.

Er... I think it might have been me who said that too... (laughs)

No, no – I assure you it wasn’t! (laughs)

(laughter)

Let’s turn now to the software installed on the Nintendo DSi XL. The Nintendo DSi now comes with software such as Flipnote Studio⁸ and the Nintendo DSi Browser⁹ preinstalled but with the Nintendo DSi XL, there are additional applications. Could you tell us more about these, Kuwahara-san?

Certainly. We thought about how to provide the customer with the best possible value and decided to preinstall software which would appeal to every user. But I didn’t have a clear idea of what kind of software to use so I consulted with Iwata-san.

On a day-to-day basis, I aim to make decisions quite swiftly in order to prevent myself becoming a bottle-neck, but after you consulted with me, I was unable to come up with a rapid decision. I apologised and told you to leave it with me for a while and then scratched my head, trying to come up with ideas.

You ended up presenting us with a total of three pieces of software, two Nintendo DSiWare¹⁰ Brain Training¹¹ titles and a dictionary program¹², didn’t you?

The reason I chose the Brain Training titles was because I wanted a lot of customers to actually try them out so it would be brought home to them how fresh the most recent Brain Training games were on the Nintendo DSi. I had a strong feeling that there would be significant numbers of customers who had enjoyed Brain Training but who would not know how to download Nintendo DSiWare from the Nintendo DSi Shop, even after purchasing a Nintendo DSi. That’s why I thought it best to include them in the installed software right from the start. In addition, when I considered the way to get people to want to leave the Nintendo DSi XL out on the table-top, I thought that it would be useful if people could look up words they didn't know and got the Nintendo DSiWare Japanese dictionary to be made in line with the Nintendo DSi XL schedule.

Apparently, customers are giving us very positive feedback about this dictionary. It works well with the large screens and the handwriting recognition means users can enter the words easily.

Moreover, if you leave the Nintendo DSi XL out on the tabletop, you can look up words whenever you want to and you can look together with other people.

With titles like Professor Layton¹³, there are those times when you're deep in thought trying to solve one of the puzzles. With the large screens and the fact that the screens boast wide-angle visibility, rather than pondering the puzzles alone, you can have other people beside you pondering the puzzles. This gives you that slightly strange feeling that you’re playing on a regular console.

I’ve got a four-year old and a six-year old, and when our older child is playing, the younger one will come up beside them to peek at what's on the screen. Well, I say peek but it’s more like they stick their heads against each others’...

You can see the screens of Nintendo DSi XL clearly even if you're some distance away. With the DS up to now, I think there are more than a few children who held their faces closer than necessary to the screen. But there were actually comments left by customers when they registered with Club Nintendo saying: “It’s really good that children can now play games without being too close to the console." I think that's something that parents clearly pick up on.

That’s just what’s happened with my family! It’s actually a really nice sight - so much so that I feel like taking pictures of it and showing everyone! (laughs)

So, the Nintendo DSi XL has been on sale for around a week. Do you have anything related to this that has left a particularly strong impression on you?

When we first announced the console, I think there were a large number of people thinking: "All they've done is made it bigger." And even though I was doing the design, I didn’t feel that I particularly wanted to get hold of one of these consoles until I saw the game images on the LCD screens.

That’s another shocking confession! (laughs)

(laughter)

When the console was first presented to us with a mocked-up version without the LCD screens, there was an employee at the company saying: “I’m definitely not going to buy that!”

Yes, there was.

I took careful note of who that person was. (laughs) Then once we had the version with the LCD screens, we did a demonstration and had people fill in a survey. When I looked over the feedback from that person, he’d written: “I want one!” (laughs)

I was the same. Thinking about it from the perspective of a customer, there's the DS Lite and the Nintendo DSi, so to be honest, isn't that enough? But then, just as you say, when I actually saw the console with the screens in place…

All of your reactions altered dramatically.

When you see those large screens, your impression switches to a positive one.

On the day the Nintendo DSi XL was released, I went to check out a large-scale vendor. I found that there were lots of Nintendo DSi XL consoles on display just as you entered the shop. Those were display models which were switched off so there was no software and the screens were black. A couple came over and while they were touching it, saying things like: "Look, it's the XL." But whether it was because the screens were blank, they seemed to be a little underwhelmed.

Without any images on the screens, it's difficult to communicate the full appeal of the console.

Yes, that's right. But in the game section of the shop, there was a Nintendo DSi XL with images on the screen. The second that couple saw it, they shouted out: “It's huge!” (laughs)

(laughter)

It's possible that on 21st November, you could hear those words all over Japan! (laughs)

I actually thought we could have even called it the Nintendo DSi Deka! (Note: “dekai” means “huge” in Japanese)

There’s absolutely no way that would have flown! (laughs)

Absolutely not! (laughs) But actually Shigeru Miyamoto-san did strongly push for naming it the Nintendo DSi Deka.

(nods very enthusiastically)

Well, both of you are from the same generation after all! (laughs) But the name was very hard to come up with, wasn’t it?

Yes, it was.

I feel that I owe everyone an apology with regards to the name. Just when the ship was getting ready to leave harbour, I caused it to capsize. If you want, you can disclose here the terrible state we got into regarding the name. (laughs)

(laughs) When Fujino-san, another designer and I were coming up with the name, we thought about it together in secret.

We considered a lot of names, didn’t we? The Nintendo DSi Comfort, the Nintendo DSi Executive...

The Nintendo DSi Premium was also suggested.

I seem to remember that the Nintendo DSi Living was also suggested...

But none of those names were really any good...

Right. I don't mean to be rude to the people who thought up those names, but that's how I felt. There's also the fact that when Japanese people think up names in English, they are going to sound strange to English native speakers but then when people from overseas suggest things, they won't quite sound right to Japanese ears. That’s how we hit upon one name to use worldwide: the Nintendo DSi XL, at least at one time.

We decided to name it the Nintendo DSi XL because while in Japan an extra-large size is called an "LL size", overseas extra-large is abbreviated to “XL”. But Japanese people are not used to the term XL. There are of course plenty of our customers who know exactly what it means, but people won't necessarily hear the term “XL" and immediately think of something that is large in size. At Nintendo, our aim is to appeal to customers from five to ninety-five years old, so we really worried about using a term that might not be comprehensible to all of our customers. Also when Japanese people say "XL" it is quite long and is not at all easy to pronounce. (Note: phonetically it is pronounced “ekkusu-eru” in Japanese) As a result of this, we came to the conclusion that in Japan we should release it as the Nintendo DSi LL. Usually we wouldn’t have considered putting out a games console with a different name for Japan and overseas, but because the name of the actual console is fixed as Nintendo DSi, I thought of the XL or LL part as simply being an indicator of size… That was the thought process that led to the about-turn in the naming...

So next we’ll be having S size and M size?

(laughter)

Could I now ask each of you to give a final message to our customers from the console’s developers?

I’m sure that customers who have already purchased the console are aware of this but I'd like to say: "It’s easy to play, isn’t it?” It came out already in the discussion but there are a lot of people who have a preconception that we’ve just made the console bigger and haven’t changed anything else. But when you actually get your hands on it, I'd like people to realise that this is a product that is gentle and highly-accessible for everyone.

So it’s a gentler Nintendo DS?

Right! That’s what it is. (laughs)

We originally created the DS with the intention of making it a product that would be easy to use. But this time round I think we’ve made it even more accessible and easy to use.

Right. The image it has is one that is accessible and gentle. I would like people to actually pick it up and feel that for themselves.

Okay, on to you, Fujino-san.

I think that the gentler, easy-to-use aspect that's just been discussed is also reflected in a number of ways in the design. For instance, the Power button is now bigger, and the volume control has been made easier to adjust. Also, as you’ll realise if you look at the console from the side, it’s in the shape of an inverted trapezium. It was designed like this in order to make the lid easier to open.

So while the majority of people might think that the size has just been increased, that’s not actually the case.

Right. I mean, it’s great if people go into a shop and say: "It's huge!" (laughs) But I’d be really pleased if people picked it up and sensed the attention to detail that’s gone in it.

Okay, over to you, Amano-san.

Well, in my case, I was put through all sorts of hardships for the three months leading up to mass-production because of that top panel. (wry laughter) It’s got nothing to do with the games themselves, but I’d really like to ask people to enjoy that shiny top panel!

You’d also like people to appreciate that feeling it has of the surface tension of water, right? (laughs)

Yes, I would. The translucent feel of the top panel isn’t something that you can really appreciate by just looking at it on the homepage. So I’d like people to go into a shop and see it for themselves.

Finally, Kuwahara-san...

It’s a whole five years since the DS was released and during that time, a whole host of developers have released titles across the whole spectrum of genres. I’d like those customers who have shied away slightly from playing the DS, thinking that the screens were rather small, to use this opportunity to sample that wide variety of games.

Also replaying games you played in the past on larger screens gives a fresh feel to the game. That’s what I found when I played Band Brothers DX.

It also feels fresh and exciting to download images you like from the Wii No Ma Channel¹⁴.

Yes, that’s right! I think you can go as far as to say that the value of Dokodemo Wii No Ma¹⁵ has been altered dramatically by the Nintendo DSi XL. For some reason, recently I've been really enjoying downloading video clips from the Wii No Ma Channel for no particular reason and watching them together with the people around me. (laughs)

Right! (laughs) There’s also one more thing I’d like to say. As the size of the console has increased greatly, there may be customers who feel that it looks rather heavy.

It is 100 grams heavier than the Nintendo DSi. But judging from comments left by customers on Club Nintendo, there are quite a large proportion of people who don’t think that it feels particularly heavy.

In fact, my four-year old child can pick it up and play on it, so I think it’s fine. So I think we can say we've come up with a product for customers aged between four and ninety-five! (laughs)

So we’ve managed to go one year younger! (laughs)

(laughter)

I’d like to finish with a rather long comment, if I may. One thing I’d like suggest is that with the release of the Nintendo DSi XL, we have introduced the idea of size variation for portable consoles. Another thing I’d like to say is that while it's been taken for granted up to now that a portable games console is for one player to play on, I feel that there’s a possibility that we may have changed this by saying: “You might be able to enjoy games together with the people around you!” As the development team have made both of these things a reality, I believe that this is a product that people are going to want to leave out on their living room or dining room tables. Also, up to now, even if someone in the household has been playing on a DS, it's hard for the people around to pay much attention to it. Even if they were to take an interest, they wouldn’t know what the person was playing. But with the Nintendo DSi XL, there’s a sense that you can go ahead and join in. I think that also makes this a very interesting piece of hardware. The way that the number of people playing video games has grown has always been from people watching other people playing games and developing an interest in that way. It’s an incredibly important and meaningful part of video games: that the people around the player should also be able to enjoy the game. This product was not originally intended to be aimed either exclusively at older people or at children. I also feel that we have introduced a new direction in portable gaming - the idea that in contrast to the existing view that handheld consoles should be small and light, you can make a DS that is kinder, gentler and easier for people to use. But I think it's incredible that less than a year after Kuwahara-san was sketching the size of the screen on sheets of card, we've been able to complete the product.

Yes, it is. But I didn't actually experience all that much hardship. They are not here today, but the software coordinators, software developers, product designers, the people working on the circuit boards, the staff in the factory, the marketing team, the project managers - there have really been people from all sorts of departments who have worked incredibly hard and had to overcome all kinds of difficulties. It’s thanks to all of their hard work that we were able to complete the product. I'd like to say a huge thank you to all of them. (Kuwahara bows to the three others) Thank you very much.

Thank you all for your hard work.