In a recent Famitsu interview, Shigeru Miyamoto expressed the difficulties he had working with Nintendo and its gamer-centric mindset.
Miyamoto detailed his frustrations with Nintendo’s mindset during the GameCube era, saying, “This is a job where you have a plan and you polish it endlessly while getting help from others. If Nintendo’s games fail to stand out as games that aren’t made that way proliferate, then it shows that the creation process is for nothing, which made me very sad. That was especially obvious during the GameCube era; Nintendo titles were hardly even discussed by the [non-gaming] general public back then.”
Miyamoto disagrees with Nintendo’s business decisions during the period, seeing the company’s insistence on trying to compete strictly as a videogame company as a bad tactic:
“The more we competed with new companies entering the market, the more we started acting similar to them. But is being number one in that competition the same as being number one with the general public?”
Much to the chagrin of “core” gamers, Miyamoto has consistently stated his love for the casual market and rejects ideas of creating traditional sequels for some of gaming’s biggest franchises. Nintendo’s new business model definitely seems in line with Miyamoto’s idea of reaching beyond the typical gamer. Some would say Nintendo has gone so far as to abandon the core gamer, but Shiggy explains his thoughts as ones that are looking at the bigger picture.
“Entertainment is something that you have to look at the world with a very wide eye as you create it. I always thought that, but there were a few years where I was unable to get off other people’s trends. It was a dilemma in my mind,” he said.
Miyamoto also details his frustrations with the gaming world’s fledgling steps into 3D, and having his ideas handicapped by the reality of technical limitations and large development teams:
“I was endlessly fascinated with 3D worlds, but what with all the issues I had to tinker with in terms of rendering and processing speed, it got to the point where I didn’t know who was making the games any longer.”
While Miyamoto’s unwavering support of the Wii and family oriented titles has definitely divided gamers’ opinions of him, Miyamoto knows that remaining profitable is job number one. While No More Heroes may be a unique game championed by critics and traditional gamers, its meager sales when compared to Wii Play and Wii Fit, are the only things investors are concerned with.
Source: 1UP
