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Nintendo's Wii Music Waits for Fans
New Game Lags Far Behind Guitar Hero and Rock Band, but Creator Banks on Growth via Word-of-Mouth

By YUKARI IWATANI KANE

After years of explosive growth, Nintendo Co. is under pressure to keep up its momentum. That puts the company's creative chief, Shigeru Miyamoto, in the hot seat again.
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Nintendo game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, shown demonstrating Wii Music, says he isn't expecting it to be an immediate hit.

The legendary game guru, who was the brains behind Nintendo's Wii console and the creator of Donkey Kong, Mario and Zelda, is facing a disappointment this holiday season. His new Wii Music game, in which players shake the Wii's controller the way an instrument would be played, has been greeted with skepticism, even from loyal fans.

"It could be Nintendo's first flop for Wii," said Benjamin Schachter, an analyst with UBS Investment Research.

In an interview, the famously private Mr. Miyamoto said he isn't bothered by how Wii Music is performing so far. "I don't expect Wii Music to be an immediate hit," said the boyish-looking 56-year-old, who joined Nintendo in 1977 and now runs its game development. "It will be a steady long-running seller that will spread gradually by word-of-mouth."

Unlike the blockbuster music games Guitar Hero and Rock Band, which have sold millions of copies, letting players act like rock stars, Mr. Miyamoto made Wii Music an improvisation game that doesn't keep track of scores.

Mr. Miyamoto said his goal is to make games more than just a form of entertainment. Wii Music, he said, has educational value as a tool to teach music theory. In the game, players choose from 60 instruments to improvise and record songs like "Yankee Doodle" and "La Cucaracha."

Consumers have been slow to seize on the idea, though. The Wii console, which has sold more than 36 million units world-wide since its release two years ago, continues to outsell other game machines by wide margins. But initial sales of Wii Music, which hit U.S. stores in October, have lagged rival music games as well as older Wii titles. Wii Music sold 297,000 copies in U.S. stores in November -- half as many copies as two Nintendo games, Wii Play and Wii Fit, that have long been on the market, according to research firm NPD Group Inc.

Meanwhile, Activision Blizzard Inc.'s latest music game for the Wii, Guitar Hero World Tour, which was also released in October, sold 475,000 copies in November, said NPD, which tracks U.S. retail sales.

Nintendo could use a new hit. Nintendo President Satoru Iwata said in an interview earlier this year that his company has realized all of the ideas it had when it first conceived of the Wii. Nintendo's stock, which more than doubled in 2007, has plunged about 50% so far this year.

It took Nintendo several years to develop Wii Music. Like many of Mr. Miyamoto's games, it was inspired by one of his hobbies. He is a folk music fan and amateur guitarist. He began playing the ukulele in junior high school and bought his first guitar in college.

Other ideas have sprung from Mr. Miyamoto's personal life. The Nintendogs game for the portable DS player, for example, came from his love of dogs, especially his Shetland sheepdog Pick. Wii Fit was born out of his interest in fitness.


Mr. Iwata has asked Mr. Miyamoto to not discuss his hobbies since they can reveal future games, but Mr. Miyamoto let slip in a recent interview that he likes to swim and does laps in a pool once or twice a week.

Despite his low-key demeanor, Mr. Miyamoto's work has made him a global celebrity. Fans scramble for his autograph at public appearances and have set up Web sites and Facebook pages that honor him or his games. In 2006, he was awarded a knighthood for his contribution to the arts by the French government.

"He's one of the most innovative and intelligent people involved in gaming," said David Hinkle, a 25-year-old admirer who runs NintendoWiiFanboy.com from his home in the Philadelphia suburbs. Without Mr. Miyamoto's games, "I wouldn't have been so inspired and in love with gaming."

Still, Mr. Hinkle said he has been underwhelmed by Wii Music. "I know what Miyamoto was doing with the game, the demographic that it was targeting, and that the game was designed to introduce folks to music, but as a real musician myself, I found the game to be a little too basic for me," he said.

Mr. Miyamoto lives with his wife and two children in Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan and home to Nintendo's white headquarters. He biked to work everyday until a few years ago when Nintendo asked him to drive for security reasons.

Nintendo declined to comment on Mr. Miyamoto's compensation. As of June, his stake in Nintendo totaled 100 shares. He and 12 other senior executives shared bonuses totaling one billion yen, or nearly $11 million, for its fiscal year ended in March, according to a regulatory filing. Mr. Miyamoto said one of his biggest worries is how gaps in pay between senior and junior developers could hurt morale.

Katsumoto Tatsukawa, who has developed games for Sony Corp. and Sega Corp., considers Mr. Miyamoto a god-like figure in the industry but said he doesn't necessarily agree with his approach. "His games are very high in quality and easy to play, but they also seem relatively easy to lose interest in because they tend to be shorter," Mr. Tatsukawa said.

Though multiple players can form an ensemble to play music in the Wii Music game, Mr. Miyamoto said the more interesting aspect for him is the ability for a player to record six separate parts to a song with different instruments and combine them to form an original recording.

"Traditional music games are fun as games, but I wanted to relay the joy of music itself," said Mr. Miyamoto, adding that he hopes the game will help spawn future musicians.

Mr. Miyamoto has proven critics wrong before. More than two years ago when Nintendo unveiled the relatively low-tech Wii, the industry was dubious about the console's prospects because it flouted the conventional wisdom that consoles had to be faster and more powerful than previous machines. Many industry observers predicted the Wii would be a short-lived fad.

Mr. Miyamoto said at the time that he found it an interesting challenge to return to the basics and come up with simple, high-quality games for the Wii that don't rely on fancy graphics or licensing of well-known athletes. "It's a good test of one's abilities as a developer," he said.