Respected UK news publication The Telegraph recently had the opportunity to interview Shigeru Miyamoto and quiz him about the decision to bring Super Mario and a number of other beloved Nintendo IPs to smartphone and tablets. Mr. Miyamoto conceded that Nintendo platforms were once the most popular on the world but with the advent of smartphone gaming things have now changed.
“About two years ago we announced that we wanted to look at smart devices as a new opportunity for a much larger audience to come into contact with our characters and our intellectual property and for that to maybe become the seed that grows into their wanting to have a closer relationship to our own hardware,” Mr Miyamoto said.
“The other thing that’s important to us, particularly with action games like this, is we require a high level of response. The hardware has to provide a stable experience and until recently we felt that we couldn’t get that. But as we saw with iPhone 7 today, the response is good enough now.”
“The intent was always that side-scrolling games would be simpler and suitable for more casual gamers to enjoy. We wanted to make something even simpler, for people who have never played a Mario game.”
“For many years our purpose in approaching games hardware has been to expand the number of people who play video games,” says Miyamoto. “The reason we did that was we were once worried that people would drift away from interactive games. We’ve seen that smart devices have increased their reach and we see this as an opportunity to bring our characters and games to that audience.”
“I love hardware platforms and Nintendo will continue to make our own hardware but what’s changed is that there was a time when Nintendo’s platforms were the most popular in the world and now we see smartphones are the most popular device in the world. So we’ll keep looking for opportunities in smartphones and when we see them we’ll design something specifically for that hardware.”
Miyamoto: ‘Nintendo platforms were the most popular in the world, but that’s changed due to us refusing to listen to our fans’
It’s sad to see how out of touch Nintendo is. To blame their failures on smart devices. Your failures started before smart devices. Remember the Nintendo 64 or how about the GameCube. The only reason the Wii sold so many until wasn’t because you listened to you fan base it’s because you ignored us and went casual. That’s when you fans got upset and went to Sony or Microsoft. I just hope that the NX will be two or more devices so it can cater to the hardcore and the casual.
The Wii actually had some great games. It wasn’t all casual.
Not all the games were, but the console itself was designed to be.
The Gamecube also had great games and it was far from being a casual system
Very true. My point was simply that we got great core games from Nintendo on the Wii. Some arguably better than some of the first party efforts on the Wii U.
the wii was far casual then the Wii U
Read the last paragraph carefully. Miyamoto was not blaming Nintendo’s failures on the rise of smartphones. The article is misleading.
I won’t be surprised if that’s what Miyamoto, and Nintendo as a whole, actually thinks, though. They are always trying to make excuses to the contrary of why they are failing. Not to mention Miyamoto has said many questionable things over the last few years. He’s lost the confidence a lot of us use to have in him.
It’d be nice if Nintendo came out & admitted their failures is because of some, if not all, of the issues I raised in my comment down below instead of this PR bullshit Reggie, and on occasion, Miyamoto say. But since they’d rather hide behind PR talk like cowards, me & others are sadly gonna always suspect the worst of everything they say til they admit the truth they are trying so hard to avoid admitting to. :/
You’re right about that. They have been admitting their faults more recently, such as the Wii U game droughts; but there are still plenty of things they haven’t admitted to doing wrong, like a total disregard for some of their biggest franchises this past generation. I have yet to hear a Nintendo rep recognize a problem with Star Fox Zero or The Metroid that Shall not be Named.
||I’m working on that front, I’m expecting my signal to reach High Command very soon, if they haven’t already…||
*looks at the ps2 sales numbers* (nope)[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvdf5n-zI14]
sounds like someone is butthurt
It’s also due to the rise of Sony and Microsoft.
I don’t mind them making some games for smartphones. Maybe it could even help hardware sales. My hope would be that most of the casual stuff moves there and they go back to making more amazing games like they’re known for on consoles. Games like how Breath of the Wild looks.
Ok I have to raise issue with this article. The title and body are implying that Miyamoto said that Nintendo platforms are no longer the most popular due to the rise of smartphones, but from what I’ve read, he never said that. The exact quote is “…Nintendo’s platforms were the most popular in the world and now we see smartphones are the most popular device in the world.” He’s just saying smartphones are the most popular gaming platforms now where once Nintendo platforms were. He’s not saying Nintendo’s current lack of popularity is due to smartphones.
I see and agree.
I don’t think that’s true at all. Mobile gaming still doesn’t seem like a hit thing to me. Is it and I’m delusional?
😵
Not just smartphones, Miyamoto and Nintendo as a whole. It was also because Sony & Microsoft rose up & kicked you guys to the side like yesterday’s trash. Not to mention ignoring the fans & making games that pissed off the original fanbase of franchises like: (in no particular order)
1. Metroid with Other M & FedshitForce.
2. Paper Mario with games like Sticker Star & Color Splash.
3. Mario Party with that stupid car thing and changing Mario Party from a board game style video game to an action game where everyone can move at the same time. (Seriously!? This is right up there with removing most of the elements that made the first two Paper Mario games so great when making Sticker Star & Color Splash!)
4. Animal Crossing with giving us a fucking lousy board game on Wii U that needed amiibo to even be playable.
5. Fire Emblem with censoring shit for really stupid reasons like ignorant people getting upset over gay conversion in one of the Fates games when that was really not the case in the game at all. Oh & censoring Tharja’s butt in Awakening in a DLC stage when all she was doing was fixing her bikini bottoms, something women & teenage girls do all the time at the beach, with what suspiciously looks like Chrom’s cape. s/ Oh that was so much better, NoA! No way is some teenager not gonna have such perverted thoughts about that! /s *rolls eyes*
6. Fire Emblem X Shin Megami Tensei with giving us a game that isn’t even anything like those two games as the game was too bright & too Japanese pop music-y.
7. Star Fox Zero forcing the Gamepad controls with no alternate controller options.
7. Fatal Frame with FF5’s DLC lingerie being replaced with cosplay outfits in the West. A game rated M for Mature where girls running in lingerie would have been perfectly safe to do. Not to mention it’s practically a staple in many horror movies. The cosplay outfits were nice too, though, so I can’t see why we couldn’t have gotten both. In fact, Japan got shit on, too, in a way since I’m sure they would have liked the cosplay outfits but I don’t think they got them.
Sorry if I missed any but those are the ones that stand out to me. But that’s not the end of the bullshit from Nintendo that pissed people off like the things they did with the Wii U: (in no particular order again)
1. No universal account system. In fact, unless I’m mistaken, you bastards promised us that for the Wii U at the very beginning but but never made good on it. Maybe the fact the Wii U failed made you guys change your mind about adding such a feature. (Okay! This one is definitely in a particular order as this is my biggest pet peeve with Wii U so it’s #1 for a reason!)
2. Forced Gamepad for Wii U settings. You can’t access them without the damn thing!
3. Needing two Gamepads to be on at the same time for the system transfer to even bloody work! (This one is actually connected to 1 & 2!)
4. Shitty marketing. Shitty, shitty marketing. And this was AFTER you promised, after 3DS, you’d never make this fucking mistake again!
5. Censoring! It’s sad that Nintendo has turned this into such a dirty fucking word these days! Sure others do it, too, but not to such a nerve wracking extent! If a character’s age is an issue, just change the bloody age unless the game’s story calls for them to be that age. No need to change the outfits if the age can be changed.
6. Not enough use of the Gamepad for games beyond being a second screen. And when some games did use the Gamepad, it was forced and not in a good way.
Again, if I missed anything, my bad. As for people that have something snippy to say about my comment & how it’s just a bunch of whining, that’s your problem, not mine. Don’t talk as if I’m the only one that has had these issues. And pull your head out of Nintendo’s ass, too. Clearly it’s too far up there if you don’t have at least one of the things I mentioned as something you have a problem with Nintendo doing. lol
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/09/ac/f1/09acf1829efab32db8ede64dc321f5c6.jpg
This is my last response or comment or question I’ll see the answer if their is a response but that’s about it. Now to my question: What do you like about Nintendo or their games? I understand if you don’t answer this but just curious to ask. I see people discuss a lot about what they don’t like but rarely, very rarely, do I see people discuss what they do like.
Sorry I can’t give specifics but I like my Zelda, Metroid, Fire Emblem, Star Fox, Paper Mario, Mario Party, etc just the way they were BEFORE this gen got kickstarted by Wii U. Aside from Zelda, I don’t like how they are changing or censoring the others for whatever silly reason. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it. That’s all I can really say on the matter without going into what I’m hating about Nintendo right now which was already covered in my comment above. I like the Gamepad for the ability of off-TV play, when & if I ever actually use it, and for the map & inventory stuff in games if the touchscreen is used for such things, but I don’t want to be forced to use the motion control features built into it like the gyro sensor. ESPECIALLY the gyro sensor! And I do like the free online but I’d gladly pay for it if it meant better servers & no more peer-by-peer connection which isn’t ideal since not everyone has good internet & I hear servers can really make up for having a bad internet connection. Well there is one specific: I love it when Zelda experiments with an artstyle or graphics and doesn’t strictly stick to one particular style. With how much I loved Wind Waker, in spite of originally not liking it because of the “cartoony” artstyle/graphics, and with how much I was looking forward to Twilight Princess with the realistic artstyle/graphics and being let down by that game, I’ve learned that artstyle/graphics do not matter when it comes to a great Zelda game since the game still feels the same regardless of artstyle. Which is a complete contrast to one of the reasons I love Metroid which IS the realistic artstyle. There’s other things I love about Metroid but I won’t get into those as this comment is long enough. In fact, I’ll end this comment here because I’d rather not spend all night on the internet describing the things I do love about the Nintendo franchises I’m into. xD
miyamoto wants to get the smart phone users a attention for making there own nintendo mobile titles. basically, i think nintendo might be in a good situation now for the apple company after they show off iphone 7. so i’m also looking forward for nintendo to reavaled the NX in october.
The only point you brought up that I have a real problem with is Other M. I don’t really get why this game gets the level of hate it does. The story was absolutely abysmal (due fully to the voice acting and script), but I thought the gameplay, with the exception of the first person sequences (which were not many), was pretty good. It’s definitely worth a second playthrough; especially since you can skip the cutscenes the second time through.
I should have gone into detail with Other M since I loved the game for the gameplay myself, but since the story of a game is just as important to me as the gameplay & music, I can’t fully support that game. If it was a movie, I’d give it a 50% support & 50% hate since I enjoyed movies like Doom & Super Mario Bros in spite of the fact they were far from being good representations of the games they were based on. That & I’ve always seen movies as pure dumb entertainment so I’ll definitely give most movies a chance, for free of course if I can watch them without paying for the movie directly like if they are on Netflix, Hulu, regular TV, or movie channels.
I agree with 90-95% of what you said except the force game pad thing and the star fox zero.
I think a large problem is the Wii U isn’t getting games that are much better than smartphone games. Noone wants to buy a $300 home console for $60 2d sidescrollers and games with barebones gameplay anymore, this isn’t the 90s.
Lol bullshit! people are playing the batman games even when they can barely get through the intro without crashing, but no one gave a shit about bayonetta. Pure ass talk…
sounds like someone is butt hurt
The idea that anyone could possibly love mobile games more than dedicaded gaming consoles makes me sick to my stomach. Those people are NOT real gamers.
but sadly thats the world we live in!!!!!!!!!! I CAN ADD TO YOUR ARGUMENT PEOPLE WHO ANALOG STICK AIM INSTEAD OF GYRO MOUSE AIM OR WII REMOTE AIM ARE NOT REAL GAMERS
same logic applys i am a real gamer i love wii remotye gyro mouse and moden controls,i love pes wii controlling whole soccer teams with my amazing wii remote YOU CAN CALL PS4 AND XBONE PHONE GAMING because like phones there swelling DUMBED DOWN EXPERIENCES
TWIN STICK FPS = DUMB
TWIN STICK FIFA PES = DUMB
evvery eliment of gaming is now DUMB AS FUK
nintendo can give us amazing controls amazing new ideas amazing gameplay mechanics BUT WHAT IS THE POINT IF ONLY 10K PEOPLE OUT THERE GET IT
AND BILLIONS OF PEOPLE ARE RUBBING THERE FINGER ON A PHONE SCREEN ON A FB GAME
its the world thats dumb not nintendo
What if Nintendo said, we’ll put Mario on Apple iOS, but you gotta put some apple in Nintendo’s NX.
Boom!
Aaron rad couldn’t stop me from consuming that!
Norrin Rad, excuse me. Damn autocorrect
miyamoto wants to get the smart phone users a attention for making there own nintendo mobile titles. basically, i think nintendo might be in a good situation now for the apple company after they show off iphone 7. so i’m also looking forward for nintendo to reavaled the NX in october.
Isn’t this old news?
Like…REALLY old?
||So amusing…||
Is that why Nintendo treats Wii U owners like shit?
There is a difference between smartphones being popular and being required nowdays. Would you buy a console that plays one game you love or a console that plays all other games
A console that plays all other games. On the other hand, if a console is only able to play one game and it’s built around the game so the game can take full advantage of said console, I might make an exception for the right price. And it’d also depend on if the game is going to be continuously updated for many, many, many, many years to come. Basically, it’d have to be a very high tech version of the old Mr. Game & Watch thing from back in the day. As for the game itself, think something like an MMO or Marvel comic that continues to this day.
you have to find a sweet spot nes snes wii ds gameboy asre all in that sweet spot
nx needs to be in the sweet spot phone userbase is meaningless overall because its a unnatural way to look at the gaming pie the phone didnt eat up a slice it increased the size of the pie….
nintendo needs ds wii like factors on nx and core value games also then its a success
Fuck Moblie (APPS not games) phone trying to cash in on our turf!