There’s a great interview with Shigeru Miyamoto on MSNBC discussing the Wii’s success, his thoughts on Wii Music, and - perhaps most pertinently - the fallout from the E3 conference.

“Our view of how we use E3 has changed” he explains. “For a very long time, E3 was an event where — and certainly Nintendo included — catered specifically to the core gamer. Now we look at more … an opportunity for us to introduce new concepts and new types of play that we intend to bring to the broader audience, particularly because of the media that gathers at E3 now.”

Entirely understandable in a way, but that’s still discounting the significant percentage of specialist press who attend these events. While I get the need to focus more on the casual games, that shouldn’t be at the expense of all first-party core titles. Still: it should certainly temper expectations for next year - if, indeed, Nintendo decides to bother in 2009. Yet he offered hope to those disappointed by Nintendo’s showing.

“So while attending an E3 event like this, they might be given the impression that Nintendo is no longer focusing on the games that appeal to the core gamer, in fact we’re still working on many of those titles, but it’s just not the type of event where we’ll be showcasing that anymore.”

You’ve probably heard already, but just to add for the sake of completeness: Miyamoto also confirmed that Nintendo is working on a Pikmin game. Which, of course, is brilliant news. Let’s just hope we get some more information on that before too long. The Tokyo Games Show in September would probably be favourite, but this is Nintendo we’re talking about.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 17th, 2008 at 8:15 pm by Chris Schilling
Columns & Opinion, Interviews.