The Proposal for the Opening Speaker

Nakayama Takuya leaned back in his chair and shook his head.

"We go up and speak? Then it becomes Sega's one-man show." Nakayama Takuya casually flipped through the desk calendar on the table, his gaze stopping on the boxes for May. "IDSA has only just set up its stall, and everyone is watching. If we look too greedy and turn E3 into Sega's new-product launch event, half those third-party manufacturers will run off next year, or they'll just perfunctorily put out a few harmless projects as decoration. The other first parties will only see IDSA as Sega's private court."

Nakayama Takuya paused, then continued, "Sony won't work either. Nobuyuki Idei is a standard elite bureaucrat. If we let him go up and speak, those game developers down below in T-shirts, drinking Coke, will only feel like they've gone back to the dull CES home-appliance show."

"Then what you mean is—"

"Send a message to Kyoto." Nakayama Takuya leaned forward, his knuckles lightly rapping the tabletop with a muffled sound. "Invite Shigeru Miyamoto."

The head of external relations froze for a moment. Clearly, this name had gone completely beyond the scope of his prepared list. "Mr. Miyamoto? But—he's only a developer. And he's with Nintendo. Handing the microphone to a competitor at a critical moment like this, won't that—"

"Won't that boost another man's morale?" Nakayama Takuya smiled, a hint of calculation in it. "Quite the opposite. This is giving them a step to climb down on, and it's saving ourselves trouble too."

He stood up and walked to the window, looking at the gloomy Tokyo sky outside.

"Think about it. What does Nintendo have in its hands right now? The Super Famicom has also begun entering the late stage of its product life cycle in the leading markets. Although its