Interview:Mercury News December 30th 2011
Date | December 30, 2011 | |
Interviewee | ||
Interviewer | Mercury News | |
Description | In this Q&A with Mercury News, Miyamoto mentions how Skyward Sword's simplified controls may attract less experienced gamers. | |
Source | ||
Q One of the big successes of the Wii has been to lure in people who either hadn't been gaming in a long time or had never been a gamer. But with "Zelda," you have a game that is 25 years old and has a long and established following. How much did the tension between appealing to those two divergent audiences play into the design of the game?
A To appeal to both is an idealistic thing. We are always trying to achieve that goal, but the fact of the matter is the "Legend of Zelda" franchise is known for its rather sophisticated game controls.
With "Skyward Sword" we tried to make it simpler. You can control the movement of Link much more intuitively. I don't know if I can say this is the perfect game for casual players, but I think we have come up with something attractive enough even for those players who have never played these sophisticated action games to understand their real attraction.
Q One of the truisms of the video game industry is that after new game machines are released, it takes several years before developers are able to maximize their potential. Where do you think developers are in maximizing the potential of the 3DS, particularly its 3-D feature?
A When it comes to the 3-D effect itself -- or the surprise factor for people to be able to say, "Wow, this 3-D!" -- I think the mission has already been completed sufficiently. But when it comes to how the 3-D effect can be used for the sake of game play without distracting people's attention too much, I do not think that developers have done a sufficient job yet. Even with "Super Mario 3DLand," I think we were able to attain just about 50 percent of the entire goal we really have to achieve. So there's much more room for us to be able to improve.
Q While the new "Mario Kart 7" has an online multiplayer feature, Nintendo is generally considered to have been slower in adopting online gaming than Microsoft or Sony. What have you learned from what they've done, and how have you decided to do things differently?
A It's true that for many years, Nintendo has been said to have been slow in online applications. And I think that's been said for 10 years or more -- even before Microsoft entered into the video game industry.
But the fact of the matter is that Nintendo has always been involved in the network business in one way or another. At least we have been continuing to experiment. The difference between Nintendo and other companies might be that Nintendo has always been trying to do something which makes sense from our business perspective, rather than trying to do something similar to other companies.
So I cannot tell if we are behind or faster. But when I am looking at how we are deploying our online business, I think what we are doing today is appropriate.
Q A lot of gaming seems to be shifting lately from traditional consoles and particularly gaming handhelds to smartphones and tablet computers. What's your opinion on this trend? And have you seen any compelling smartphone or tablet games?
A To me, the utmost concern is how we can create games for dedicated game machines that are unique enough so that they can never be reproduced on any other devices.
I believe as time goes by, the kinds of games people are expecting on smartphones are going to be largely different from what games people are expecting from the dedicated video game machines.
I recently purchased a smartphone and tried several games myself, but I just have not been able to find any games so far that I particularly like.
Q You guys have a new console coming out next year. What aspects of it particularly excite you as a game developer?
A Wii developers are always trying to make something new and unprecedented, but there is always some limit whenever we are working on existing hardware. But when the working environment or the subject for which we are making the game changes, it can give us a fresh idea to make something really new. Whenever we face that kind of situation, that's very exciting.