During Nintendo’s 74th annual shareholders Q&A, a question was asked regarding Nintendo’s views on how industries fluctuate over time and the relation of that to Nintendo’s current difficulties, citing how the 1950s and 60s movie industry worked to stop its own decline by producing “quality pictures,” as well as the company’s opinion on the impact of smart phones on gaming.

Shigeru Miyamoto’s response to that question was a rather interesting one. He mentioned that, to a lot of people, much of what was shown at E3 seemed similar in nature, “as though many people followed the same direction to make their video games,” and it’s Miyamoto’s belief that this similarity between so many games is “a revelation of creative immaturity on our part as creators in the video game industry.”

Miyamoto references the words of the late Hiroshi Yamauchi, former president of Nintendo, who would say that, in the entertainment business, it tends to be the case that one entity will create something unprecedented or exceptional and in doing so become victorious over all of its competition because the consumer will think it unnecessary to purchase the product of anyone else. Following that, Miyamoto explains his own thought that the mediums of comic books and movies “are challenging themselves to be even more creative than before” while the games industry is currently in a “transitional period,” out of which it will eventually emerge “into the phases where we expand and enrich the substance of our creativity.” Miyamoto believes that, if Nintendo in mind this challenge, they have the ability to “create new entertainment that dominates the industry.”

“As Mr. Takeda just said, I believe it is important for us to learn from our predecessors in the movie and other media industries. This is something I mentioned earlier today (during my remarks on E3,) but to some, it might have seemed as though there wasn’t a wide variety of software at E3, and as though many people followed the same direction to make their video games. I believe this is a revelation of creative immaturity on our part as creators in the video game industry. The late Mr. Hiroshi Yamauchi, the former president of Nintendo, often used to say that in the entertainment business, only one can become strong and all of the others will become weak. With this remark, he was not referring to the arrogance of the winner. He mentioned this to describe the nature of the entertainment business, which tends to create just one winner because in the entertainment business everyone buys your offering if you create something unprecedented, and consumers do not think it is necessary to purchase products from others in the industry. To survive in the entertainment industry, it is often the case that everyone tries to follow suit with the strong one. My comment may be at risk of being misinterpreted, but in the digital content field, I think that our creativity is still immature. In the world of comic books and movies, there are people who are challenging themselves to be even more creative than before in creating their content. I believe that we (those who are creating digital content called video games) are still in a transitional period and will eventually step up into the phases where we expand and enrich the substance of our creativity. If we can manage Nintendo without losing sight of this challenge, I believe we might be able to create new entertainment that dominates the industry. Also, some may think it is fair to compete with others on the same hardware platform, but it is always challenging to become the one strong existence among so many companies, and to Nintendo, it is more advantageous to create and propose to consumers a brand new framework that includes hardware as part of the structure. We would like to continuously develop something unique by not abandoning this strength of our company. I ask for your continued support.” — Shigeru Miyamoto

I can’t tell for sure if Miyamoto is talking about creativity in terms of creating “the next big thing” or in terms of creating a larger diversity of games (or perhaps something in between), but this is certainly an interesting sentiment, and it’s one I think I share, at least in some respects. How about you?

Source: Nintendo Shareholder Q&A via NeoGAF

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