任天堂的巖田聰 賦予遊戲魔力的人
About a decade ago, Bobby Kotick, chief executive of the video games company Activision Blizzard, flew to Kyoto to visit Nintendo. He was shown to a room with a television on which was displayed an image of a pond with bubbles floating to the surface. Satoru Iwata, Nintendo’s president, handed him a games controller called a wand and guided his hand to cast a virtual fishing line.
大約10年前，視頻遊戲公司動視暴雪(Activision Blizzard)首席執行官鮑比科蒂克(Bobby Kotick)乘機飛往京都參觀任天堂(Nintendo)。他被帶到一個有電視的房間，電視上顯示的是一個池塘的畫面，水泡正浮向水面。任天堂總裁巖田聰(Satoru Iwata)交給他一個被稱爲“魔杖”的遊戲控制器，然後引導他的手拋出虛擬的釣魚線。
As Mr Kotick drew back the wand, observed by Iwata and Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo’s chief games designer, a fish popped out of the pond. “I remember the delight on their faces as they saw me realise that this would change the face of entertainment — these two guys who had the instinct, the courage and the vision to do something radically different,” he says.
在巖田聰和任天堂首席遊戲設計師宮本茂(Shigeru Miyamoto)的注視下，科蒂克把魔杖向後拉，一條魚跳出了池塘。他說：“我記得當他們看到我意識到這將改變娛樂的面貌時，他們的臉上露出開心的表情，這是兩個有天分、勇氣和夢想去做一些徹底不同的事情的人。”
Iwata, who this week died of cancer at 55, was often regarded as the business partner to a creative genius — the Roy Disney to Mr Miyamoto’s Walt, the Domenico de Sole to Mr Miyamoto’s Tom Ford at Gucci, or the business half of Steve Jobs’s brain at Apple. That understates his role in guiding Nintendo to an extraordinary coup with the launch of the Wii console in 2006.
巖田聰本週因癌症去世，終年55歲。他經常被視爲創意天才的商業搭檔——如果宮本茂是沃爾特迪斯尼(Walt Disney)，巖田聰就是羅伊迪斯尼(Roy Disney)，如果宮本茂是古馳(Gucci)的湯姆輠祹(Tom Ford)，巖田聰就是多米尼克德∠爾(Domenico De Sole)，或者如果宮本茂是蘋果(Apple)的史蒂夫吠布斯(Steve Jobs)，那麼巖田聰就是喬布斯大腦中的商業半球。這低估了他在引導任天堂取得非凡成功方面的作用，2006年，任天堂推出遊戲機Wii，大獲成功。
Putting a low-tech console, running quirky games for family entertainment, up against the high-definition technology of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s PlayStation 3 was like entering a Fiat
用運行家庭娛樂搞怪遊戲的低科技含量遊戲機，與微軟(Microsoft) Xbox 360以及索尼(Sony) PlayStation 3使用的高清技術競爭，就像是開一輛菲亞特500(Fiat 500)參加一級方程式(Formula One)賽車。遊戲開發商Mind Candy創始人邁克爾阿克頓史密斯(Michael Acton Smith)表示，這樣的競爭相當於用“樂趣、魔力和快樂對決冷冰冰的處理能力。”
500 in a Formula One race. The contest amounted to “fun, magic and joy against brute processing power,” says Michael Acton Smith, founder of the games publisher Mind Candy.
樂趣、魔力和快樂最終取勝，它們是貫穿《超級馬里奧兄弟》(Super Mario Bros)、《塞爾達傳說》(The Legend of Zelda)、《Wii運動》(Wii Sports)等任天堂遊戲的特點。我參加了當時在洛杉磯舉辦的E3視頻遊戲展，當宮本茂穿着魔法師服裝走上舞臺時，我看到觀衆爲之傾倒。索尼PlayStation 3使用的多線程芯片無法與其媲美。
Fun, magic and joy — the qualities of Nintendo games from Super Mario Bros and The Legend of Zelda to Wii Sports — won. I attended the E3 video games show in Los Angeles at the time, and saw the adulation when Mr Miyamoto walked on stage in a wizard costume. Sony’s multi-threaded chip for the PlayStation 3 could not match that.
遊戲產業聽上去並不重要，因此與喬布斯挽救蘋果或郭士納(Louis Gerstner)拯救IBM等備受追捧的大轉折故事相比，任天堂在巖田聰帶領下的復甦很容易被忽視。然而這項成就同樣具有革命性，這是一次衝破萬難後的成功，它將視頻遊戲從青少年的小衆愛好變成以家庭爲導向的樂趣。
The games industry does not sound important, so Nintendo’s revival under Iwata is easy to ignore compared with feted turnrounds such as Jobs’s rescue of Apple or Louis Gerstner’s of IBM. It was equally revolutionary, though — a triumph against the odds that turned video gaming from a niche hobby of teenagers and young adults into family-oriented fun.
與喬布斯一樣，巖田聰和宮本茂是憑藉相信自己的本能（和公司的歷史積累）、並堅決無視其他人而取得成功的。英國遊戲企業家、Midoki公司和Playdemic公司董事長伊恩利文斯通(Ian Livingstone)表示：“任天堂一直都在走自己的路。他們從未妥協，也從不在乎他們的競爭對手在做什麼。”
Like Jobs, the two men achieved this by trusting in their instincts — and the company’s heritage — and obstinately ignoring everyone else. “Nintendo has always gone its own way. They have never compromised and never cared what their competitors are doing,”says Ian Livingstone, the UK games entrepreneur who is chairman of Midoki and Playdemic.
任天堂的固執己見最近付出了巨大代價。巖田聰拒絕讓他的品牌出現在手機上，而堅持其“圍牆花園”傳統：玩家必須購買該公司的遊戲機才能玩該公司的遊戲，這導致任天堂受到PlayStation 4以及休閒遊戲的擠壓，比如Mind Candy的《莫西怪獸》(Moshi Monsters)和現在由微軟所有的《我的世界》(Minecraft)。
Nintendo’s obstinacy has recently carried a high price. Iwata’s refusal to let his brands appear on mobile phones, instead sticking with the “walled garden” tradition of gamers having to buy its devices to play the company’s games, resulted in it being squeezed between PlayStation 4 and casual games such as Mind Candy’s Moshi Monsters and Minecraft , now owned by Microsoft.
在經歷了3年的虧損後，巖田聰在去世前逆轉了戰略，他簽署協議，讓任天堂的遊戲角色出現在移動遊戲應用上，以及環球影業(Universal)的主題公園內。在宮本茂和董事竹田玄洋(Genyo Takeda)新一屆領導層的帶領下，馬里奧兄弟和塞爾達將掙脫束縛。
After three years of losses, Iwata re瘀攀爀猀攀攙 course just before his death, signing deals to put Nintendo characters on mobile gaming apps, as well as in Universal theme parks. The Mario brothers and Zelda are to escape captivity under the new leadership of Mr Miyamoto and Genyo Takeda, a director.
任天堂的企業發展之路一直像是坐過山車，它拒絕在情感和商業模式上妥協，這既將公司帶到過驚人的高點，也曾使其陷入低谷。它在上世紀90年代遭到了世嘉(Sega)推出的電玩遊戲《刺蝟索尼克》(Sonic the Hedgehog)的伏擊，後來世嘉由於在夢工廠(Dreamcast)遊戲機上的失敗陷入危機，並將業務縮減至僅做遊戲出版商。巖田聰開始掌舵任天堂時，許多分析師曾預測任天堂也將輸給索尼和微軟。
Nintendo always was a roller-coaster enterprise, its refusal to compromise on its sensibility and its business model leading both to stunning highs and deep lows. It was ambushed by Sega with Sonic the Hedgehog in the 1990s before Sega faltered with the failure of its Dreamcast console and retreated to being purely a games publisher. Many analysts expected Nintendo to also succumb to Sony and Microsoft at[AT?] the time that Iwata took charge.
然而，巖田聰明白一件競爭對手不明白的事：魔力可以打敗技術。任天堂證明了自己能夠利用搞怪、有趣的人物以及複雜的遊戲設計，超越其早期遊戲設備（1985年的“紅白機”(NES)和1989年的掌上游戲機Game Boy）的技術限制。
Iwata, however, understood one thing that his competitors did not: that magic beats technology. Nintendo had proved able to transcend the limited technology of its earlier devices — the Nintendo Entertainment System console in 1985 and the Game Boy handheld in 1989 — with quirky, amusing characters and intricate games design.
到21世紀頭十年之初，遊戲機之戰已經聚焦於速度和高清圖像方面。索尼和微軟都認爲制勝之道在於，爲射擊和體育遊戲（如Halo和Madden NFL等主要是男性“核心玩家”玩的遊戲）提供更逼真、更身臨其境的體驗。視頻遊戲行業開始圍繞高清標準纏鬥。
By the early 2000s, the console wars had narrowed to speed and high-definition images. Both Sony and Microsoft thought the way to win was to offer more realistic and immersive versions of shooting and sports games such as Halo and Madden NFL, played largely by male “core gamers”. The video games industry became tangled up in a high-definition standards battle.
巖田聰知道，任天堂註定會輸掉這輪競爭，他把目標完全轉移到了別處：擴大市場規模。一名玩家買PlayStation 3遊戲機要花499美元，而巖田聰賣給家庭的Wii遊戲機只售249美元，還附帶網球和保齡球等遊戲。他提供的是迷人、輕鬆的娛樂活動，而非慘烈的戰爭。
Knowing that Nintendo was bound to lose this contest, Iwata aimed at something else entirely: expanding the size of the market. Instead of one person having to pay $499 for a PlayStation 3, he sold the family a Wii for $249 with games such as tennis and bowling. Rather than crushing wars, he offered charming light entertainment.
即使在任天堂陷入當前麻煩之際，他的真知灼見仍被證明具有洞察力。大多數遊戲都不是戰鬥類遊戲，大多數人追求的是樂趣和娛樂，不論在遊戲設備上還是手機上。重要的是遊戲的魔力，而不是遊戲機的帶寬。
