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The New York Times had an interview with Shigeru Miyamoto on March 11, where the legendary game designer candidly discussed his views on the future of Wii U, his career, and video games as art.
Wii U has had decent sales since its release in November, but they don’t measure up to the sales of Nintendo’s predecessor, Wii. From November 2012 to now, Wii U has sold around 940,000 units in America, compared to Wii’s 1.5 million during the same timeframe in late 2006 and early 2007. “I think that the Wii U still has a long future,” said Miyamoto regarding the system sales. “We really view it as being the ideal device that families are going to want to have connected to that screen in the living room that everyone is going to gather around and watch. Certainly in the short term I would want to see it performing with probably a little more momentum. I think in the long term I’m not at a point where I’m concerned yet.”
Miyamoto also offered his optimistic opinion when presented the fact that smartphones and tablet games are now a competing force in the gaming world. “Entertainment is an unpredictable industry. Entertainment is this thing that moves around from place to place. You have a theme park like Disneyland, and that’s a form of entertainment,” he said. “Nintendo’s stance, over all, is that we don’t know where entertainment will take us next.”
The NY Times also asked for Miyamoto’s opinion about the Museum of Modern Art’s recent exhibit on video games. “I think the saddest thing about video games is that once the hardware that the game runs on stops operating, the game is gone. And the only way to preserve it then is through video… At the same time it seems a little strange to me. I still look at video games as entertainment. And it seems strange to me to take entertainment and preserve it as a piece of art per se.”
Miyamoto ended the interview by saying that previously, Nintendo has not focused so much on online features in its games, but now seeks to do so, as the Internet “opens up a tremendous amount of possibilities,” as he put it. You can check out the entire interview below.
Source: NY Times
I think people are making a big fuss about sales numbers over nothing. First of all these are the first 6 months and no console outside of Wii really performs well or has tons of games in that time frame.
This is the first new console we’ve seen in a while and honestly the market has changed. The casual people all have a box that plays their Netflix and Hulu now and aren’t really looking to upgrade. Typically the people you see buying now are going to be hardcore gamers for the smallest bit of graphical upgrade and to follow the games.
In my opinion I think that the Wii U has the potential to have the most varied and fun games on it, rather than just the newest and prettiest. I currently don’t own the system for financial reaons, but I tend to remedy that soon.