The problems with Switch development, the number of prototypes and early Joy-Con ideas
The third and final part of our translation of a Toyo Keizai Online interview with Shinya Takahashi and Yoshiaki Koizumi of Nintendo Co., Ltd.. Please go here for the first part and here for the second part. And please credit Japanese Nintendo if re-using elsewhere (and that includes you, Nintendo Everything).
In which parts of the development did you have hardships at?
Koizumi: In any rate it was the battle against “balance.” Coming from a game software developer, there is a strong demand to make it a hardware with simply high specs by employing good memory and GPU. Personally, as I am also a software developer, I do have the desire to do that.
On the other hand, we also had to make it light and small so that it can be carried outside, and also with a cool design. We need to consider the price and life time of batteries as well. Furthermore, there is a deadline in the development period, and development resources in our company are also limited. The most difficult part was on how to take an overall balance while we were getting entangled with all of those in complexity.
How far did you make the prototype?
Koizumi: I don’t remember that. It’d be hectic if we were to give numbers to prototypes so we didn’t count them (laughs).
Takahashi: From what I’ve actually seen, there were around 5 of them.
Koizumi: We tested a number of variations for just the method of attaching the Joy-Con to the console. Ultimately we settled with the method of sliding them into the rails on the console, but at the prototyping phases we tried a lot of methods like sticking them with magnets and putting them on dish-shaped parts.
Text kindly translated by Kite Stenbuck. Please support his hard work here.
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