A new interview with Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto has revealed he thinks people don’t care about graphics and performance that much anymore, compared to consumer priorities in generations gone by.
As picked up by Nintendo Everything, Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu talked to Miyamoto last week, with a focus on how Nintendo has developed new ways to play over time – especially since the Wii and DS era. Even if the Nintendo Switch family of consoles feels more traditional in their approach to controls, it marked the first serious foray into hybrid gaming hardware. With Switch 2 now becoming one of the fastest-selling consoles ever and the Switch 1 family being discontinued in Europe, it was the perfect time to ask the legendary creator about his thoughts on the company’s past, present, and future.
“I was happy that the Switch lasted for 8 to 9 years. I think that customers are no longer just looking for specs. I think the ideal is that if you buy the software, you can play it on the device you have at home,” Miyamoto explained before saying Nintendo has provided “gameplay that only we can create” and had the advantage of working on a single “architecture” versus several at once.
He brought up smartphones as devices that are “everywhere” but present problems when it comes to game development, such as different levels of performance and features.
“We still want to make a living with minimal effort, to live without working,” he joked before going on to explain that reducing the amount of work is important to create a more efficient production process. As PlayStation and Xbox continue to struggle ahead of the next generation, where hardware shortages and rising costs make the prospect of both Xbox Helix and PS6 galling for many buyers, maybe Miyamoto is onto something: players simply want something at home that runs the games they want to play.
Looking at Nintendo’s first-party output in recent years, it’s hard to argue against the facts or the advantage of developing blockbusters for a single family of devices and without looking to pack the shiniest graphics in the industry. Meanwhile, we have Sony rolling back short-lived PC port plans and Xbox trying to figure out if it wants to be a third-party publisher while also trying to dominate the console market.
