GDC 2009 Reveals New Ueda, Nintendo DSi Talks

Author: by Staff

Organizers of next month's Game Developers Conference are continuing to add major talks, this time revealing a panel featuring ICO creator Fumito Ueda alongside Suda51 and Fallout 3's Emil Pagliarulo, plus DSi hardware lead Masato Kuwahara on making Nintendo's new handheld. Firstly, in a newly revealed panel called 'Evolving Game Design: Today and Tomorrow, Eastern and Western Game Design', Sony's Fumito Ueda, creator of ICO and Shadow Of The Colossus, will be making a rare Western appearance to discuss the state of Western and Eastern game design. Appearing alongside him is Goichi Suda, aka SUDA51, the creator of titles including Killer 7 and No More Heroes at Grasshopper Manufacture, as well as Bethesda's Fallout 3 lead designer Emil Pagliarulo, with 8-4's Mark MacDonald moderating the panel. As the description explains: "What are the most important recent trends in modern game design? Where are games headed in the next few years? Drawing on their own experiences as leading names in game design, the panel will discuss their answers to these questions, and how they see them affecting the industry both in Japan and the West." Secondly, in a talk named 'The Inspiration Behind Nintendo DSi Development', Masato Kuwahara, who is Project Leader for the Nintendo DSi hardware group, will discuss the creation of Nintendo's enhanced DS handheld. According to the lecture description, Kuwahara, who led the team adding features like flash memory and downloadable games to the DSi, "will explain how the company came to develop the system with all these new features, and what kind of new software development opportunities the team had in mind." Game Developers Conference 2009 takes place at the Moscone Center in San Francisco from March 23rd to 27th, and more information on the event and registration is available at the official GDC website.