In a shocking twist of events, Shigeru Miyamoto, the genius mind behind the Mario and Legend of Zelda franchises has taken a step back from hardware development, in order to focus more on the software side of things in Nintendo. However, that’s not all he said, as he also believes that the Wii U’s lack of success in the 8th generation of console gaming is due to a “lack of understanding,” in an interview with Fortune this past Tuesday.
Concerning his position in Nintendo, Miyamoto-san had this to say:
“I’ve pulled myself back out of some of the hardware section and I’m really focused on some of the software that I’m involved in—for example, the new Starfox game…Of course I am observing and looking at the hardware, but I am not actively participating and making decisions.”
This is truly an interesting notion, considering that the NX, Nintendo’s newest console offering is possibly 2 years away, and we’ll most likely hearing about this at E3 2016, as Nintendo was speaking with third-party publishers about it at this past E3, which according to many insiders, the reception received was reportedly “positive.”
But with news of this new console that’s on the horizon, Miyamoto blamed failure of the Wii U on the popularity of the tablet, as well as the consumer misunderstanding of what Nintendo was truly set to do with the console.
“I feel like people never really understood the concept behind Wii U and what we were trying to do…I think the assumption is we were trying to create a game machine and a tablet and really what we were trying to do was create a game system that gave you tablet-like functionality for controlling that system and give you two screens that would allow different people in the living room to play in different ways. …. Unfortunately, because tablets, at the time, were adding more and more functionality and becoming more and more prominent, this system and this approach didn’t mesh well with the period in which we released it.”
Miyamoto also stated that he regrets that the Wii U will never live up to it’s full potential as a result. It’s also interesting that it took both Sony and Microsoft less than a year each to move the amount of consoles that Nintendo did in two and a half total years.
Source: Fortune
