Shigeru Miyamoto Famitsu Interview Part 1

The first part of our translated Weekly Famitsu interview with Shigeru Miyamoto who talks about being selected as Culture Contributor, Nintendo excited at their first magazine coverage, his past comments on mobile gaming, making Mario sequels with new technology and not for the sake of it, wanting to be accepted like Disney, the DS and Wii era, protecting the basics of the Super Mario series, and not letting developers get content.

Look out for more parts in the coming days. Many thanks to BlackKite for translating this for Japanese Nintendo. Please credit if posting elsewhere. Buy Weekly Famitsu here (use the code JPNINTENDO for 5% off all physical orders above $20). Please consider buying me a coffee and to help support future translations.

Miyamoto as Culture Contributor

Shigeru Miyamoto’s comments on getting selected as a Culture Contributor “Games are not created by a single person, so I’m very sorry for receiving this honour personally. The members with whom I started developing games together from almost 40 years ago are still developing together with me even now, while cooperating with developers all around the world. I’m deeply grateful that this team – which has a sense of stability – is getting valued, and also for video games to be given spotlight as Japanese culture. I shall continue devoting myself to make people worldwide smile even from hereafter.”

(Famitsu noted that Japan’s video game culture has piled up much as of today exactly because the entire Nintendo company including Miyamoto himself created a large market almost 40 years ago, and Miyamoto’s name was mentioned for its symbol and representative, so he didn’t have to be sorry)

“If games could just be created alone, I would have said ‘Thank you’ in a bit more dignified way. But since games are like combined arts, that’s not really the case. However, I hadn’t really gotten a spotlight for a one-man job, so when I think about it… I feel like I met with an interesting job (laughs).”

“Rather than ‘We’re finally rewarded for what we’ve been working on’, the current lifestyle is getting filled with digital media. So when I think about the past, I feel like ‘I’m glad video games have now become so common.’”

Reminiscing on the past

Miyamoto reminisces the past when there were still no media covering video games. For example, when Gunpei Yokoi created Game & Watch, Miyamoto had his illustrator friends bring the units to publications in hope that they would cover it. At first, he got told ‘What a strange company where PR is done by developers instead of promotion staff’, but eventually a computer magazine started covering video games, which made everyone at Nintendo very excited.

The even more pleasant times for them came when magazines dedicated to video games started showing up. But after that they had to change their mindsets that ‘Games are not a new thing in particular, there’s going to be an even newer thing’. Miyamoto personally had to change his own era mindsets from ‘If we create games, we can normally have them featured in media’ to ‘Somehow it doesn’t stand out. People aren’t going to look at it.’

“Games wouldn’t be able to be played on mobile phones”

Miyamoto boasted in the past that ‘Games wouldn’t be able to be played on mobile phones’. But as time goes on, everyone now owns high-performance phones, and games get distributed for free. “We have come to a point where we think ‘it’s unbearable if this thing is distributed for free’ no matter how cheap we sell game consoles.”

“We don’t just simply make sequels”

“[…] Even though Super Mario games make a series, we don’t just simply make sequels; we make one when a new technology shows up. For example, one when a Mega ROM with large capacity showed up, and then one when CPU processing speed has become 16-bit. Once we’ve seen new ideas and materials that can be realized with a new hardware, we make it. As a result of piling that up, I think it’s able to get valued continuously.”

“Why can’t games make parents relieved just like Disney?”

When Miyamoto looked at common parents in the past, he noticed how parents look worried when children play games, yet they look relieved when the children watched Disney videos. Even though watching videos is the same as playing games, this made him think “Why does this happen? It’s like there’s a wall.” “Why can’t games make parents relieved just like Disney?” That’s why he wanted to “make games can be used in living rooms”.

On the Nintendo DS and Wii era

Eventually, games became mainstream around the eras of Nintendo DS & Wii. “In the Wii era, I said something like ‘Looks like it has been received by most mothers. Now we should do something for grandfathers and grandmothers too’. When a child said ‘I made grandpa’s Mii’, the grandfather ought to be happy (laughs). That’s why I said ‘Let’s make such a thing.’ If a family starts talking about how the father and grandfather use the game console in the living room to measure their weights, that means everyone’s already enjoying games, and I strongly hoped it would continue to expand in that way.”

“But in the end, it became really ubiquitous when everyone has a mobile [device] that can play games in ordinary lives. It has accelerated ever since [people] start owning smartphones. There are also people who have smartphones but never played games at all.” “They already have the device, so the hurdle to deliver games to them is always lower than making them buy game consoles. So now I think ‘Ah, this keeps expanding the opportunities. This is fun’.”

Protecting the basics of the Super Mario series

The team had always protected the basics of Super Mario series, which is usually split into four courses with a castle, and if a player gets a Game Over in the middle they’d have to start over. While there are still customers who enjoy challenging that, there have been more customers that want “Let us go to the next one even if we made a mistake”. Making something that caters to both audiences have been a task to the team in the recent years, though Famitsu pointed out that the change in quality of customers is also the result of them expanding [the userbase].

Miyamoto is no longer satisfied with just adding new courses never seen before; he now prefers ‘wanting to make it more fun’. He won’t let game devs get content with ‘just adding something’. If it’s just ‘because it’s a video game’, the media may be not interested in covering them. Although Miyamoto’s team is lucky to be in a place where they always get spotlights in competitions against other entertainments.

“[…] If we make something that has really new fun factors not seen anywhere else, it should continue to sell for many years instead of disappearing one month after its release. That’s why I made it to go that way.”