Wed, Mar 11, 2009 | 19:43 GMT
Shigeru Miyamoto felt “sadness” during Nintendo’s GameCube era
Shigeru Miyamoto has revealed to Famitsu that he felt “sadness” during Nintendo’s GameCube phase.
“There was an era when Nintendo was going in the direction of doing the same things other companies did,” he said.
“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? That’s the question we had.”
He continued: “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.”
During Nintendo’s N64 console era and the one following, Miyamoto was fascinated with 3D worlds, but the rendering and processing speed were too much for the team at the time.
“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 general public back then.”
Because of his team’s mental block, Nintendo started over and aimed for games that could “be played by people who don’t play games”. The company wanted something that would revolutionize the market — so ex-Nintendo president Yamauchi came up with the ‘two screens’ concept.
The rest is DS history.
More over on 1UP.
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Posted in: DS, Development, Nintendo, Wii, hardware
Tags: gamecube, n64, shigeru miyamoto
8 comments
#1
Gekidami
11/03/09, 8:02 pm
And now Nintendo is hardly even considered a video game company… Happy days!
#2
Hunam
11/03/09, 8:40 pm
He looks like a monster.
#3
Gekidami
11/03/09, 8:42 pm
Indeed, he clearly wants your children on the picture and will attract them with the Wii’s child-friendly line-up, its all just his plan.
#4
wz
11/03/09, 9:39 pm
I’d say Nintendo is more or less the only video game company now — for the general audience at least.
#5
DaMan
11/03/09, 9:46 pm
I honestly feel sadness during this Wee era.
#6
cachucha
11/03/09, 9:50 pm
he is feeling sadness for not having prices up already :<
#7
Michael O'Connor
11/03/09, 11:18 pm
“And now Nintendo is hardly even considered a video game company… Happy days!”
And yet Super Mario Galaxy was miles ahead of Super Mario Sunshine. And Twilight Princess was a beautiful presented game. And Super Smash Bros. Brawl was miles ahead of Melee, and an extremely good fighting game to boot.
There’s plenty of “core” titles on the Wii. They might not be every single week, so but so what? They’re still there, and they’re still great games.
#8
Blerk
12/03/09, 8:19 am
Separated at birth!