Games Industry Wire

Nintendo’s Cammy Dunaway talks E3

by Kiven on July 22nd, 2008

Nintendo’s Cammie Dunaway talks to Wired and wants to let us know that she’s not fake.

“Tell your blog that I’m really a genuinely smiley, nice person. Because people think I’m fake, smiling up there,” Nintendo’s new executive vice president said in an interview during last week’s E3 Media & Business Summit. Dunaway was referring to the company’s poorly received E3 press conference days before, in which she served as the lead presenter. Gaming fans watching at home, and even some in-person attendees, thought her exuberant performance sounded like false enthusiasm for the company’s lineup of mostly casual games.

For me, it’s not as she’s fake or not. When she presented for Nintendo at E3, a lot of gamers were shocked to see someone as cheerful as her (well, relative to the Reggienator) onstage. I read someone even say: “Gee, that looks like my Mom having fun out there”. Not exactly a good pitch for the “core” gamers that Nintendo supposedly is also thinking about.

Sorry, Ms. Dunaway. It would have helped if Ninty showed core gamers games they would actually play. And for me, maybe even Zelda and Mario just wont cut it anymore…..

Wired.com: Let me preface this by saying, I understand that Nintendo keeps getting hammered with: Wii is a fad, you’re not going to keep engaging these Wii Sports people, they’re going to get bored of it, and you had to show how Nintendo is going to keep these people playing with new ideas. A-plus. Home run. But as a hard-core gamer who bought a Wii for Zelda and Mario, where’s the content for me?

Cammie Dunaway: Well, you heard [Nintendo President Satoru] Iwata’s commitment, that the Zelda and Mario teams are hard at work. And you know us, Chris, we don’t talk about things until we are confident that they are in a place where we’re going to be able to deliver on them in relatively short order after talking about them. So you have to know that those teams are working hard and there will be stuff that will be delightful coming out. Meanwhile, hopefully titles from third parties like Call of Duty will be fun for you. Also, hopefully you’re going to be able to enjoy titles like Animal Crossing and Wii Music for what they are — very different experiences. Experiences that’ll be social, and you’ll play with a group of different people.

Wired.com: At the same time, isn’t E3 the time to do this? Aren’t you really addressing the hard-core gamer crowd when you come to E3, even now?

Dunaway: I think we’re addressing both. Absolutely the hard-core gamer crowd is critically important to us.

Wired.com: Because there are kids at home watching this press conference on TV. Or glued to their monitors, popcorn in hand. And they’re waiting for, here’s the new Zelda, the new Mario, Kid Icarus, whatever.

Dunaway: Absolutely, but we announce what we have that’s ready to share. And one of the things that I love so much about Nintendo that I think is certainly unique in the scope of the companies that I’ve been involved in is that we don’t release stuff until it’s perfect. And so we don’t talk about stuff until we’ve got a great degree of confidence that we’re close enough to release it. So we announce what we have. And we’re really proud of what we have coming in to this holiday season. Animal Crossing with WiiSpeak, which is a completely different take on the social experience, being able to have a room full of people talking to another room full of people. And Animal Crossing is a franchise that’s been really enjoyed and embraced by a lot of serious gamers. And Wii Music, which is just such vintage Nintendo. Because it’s taking something that’s a genre that everybody thinks they understand and twisting it on its ear, and doing it in a really fresh way. It’s all about creativity, all about improvisation rather than mastery.

Full Interview via Wired. Images via Wired.com.

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POSTED IN: E3, Interviews, Nintendo