At the 2005 GDC, Hecker delivered a rant about the balance of graphics, physics and gameplay, and now with the 360 and PS3 released, the balance is out-of-whack in favor of graphics and physics. At his 2005 speech, he posed the question "Will Nintendo save us?"
His answer in 2007?
"The Wii is a piece of shit."
Laughter and shocked applause from the developer-heavy crowd ensued, as Hecker elaborated to the tune of Public Enemy (seriously...he cranked it). Revealing the darkest secrets of the Wii manufacturing process ("Take two GameCubes and duct tape them together"), Hecker raked Nintendo against the coals for including a "piece of shit underpowered CPU" in the Wii, and stressed that it wasn't the graphics that are important, but how intelligent the console can be for delivering more "serious" games.
And that was the main crux of his rant -- Nintendo isn't taking games seriously enough. Juxtaposing quotes from Sony and Microsoft PR plans ("games can be art" etc.) against Nintendo's Eiji Aonuma ("our goal is to just make games that are fun"), Hecker finds the latter approach "not good enough." He claims that games can be a legitimate art form in the 21st century, "it's just ours to f*** up." Jokingly (?) threatening to rush tomorrow's Miyamoto keynote, Hecker concluded by giving two pieces of completely unsolicited advice to Nintendo:
1) Push games as a serious art form, and 2) "Make a console that doesn't suck ass."
One wonders how many in the development community share this opinion...
