Nintendo Staying Focused on Fun

Shigeru Miyamoto has seen the future of games and he doesn't like it. So it's quite handy that he's in a position to make sure Nintendo does things differently.

Do you finish your games? While hard evidence is difficult to come by, it seems from anecdotal reports that more than half of gamers don't finish the games they buy. And if you think that games are overly girthed these days, you're not alone.

Does it look like he hates fun?

Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of some of the most loved franchises in video games, admitted recently that, "a lot of the games out there are just too long".

"Of course," Miyamoto told CNN/Money, "there are games, such as Halo or Grand Theft Auto, that are big and expansive. But if you're not interested in spending that time with them, you're not going to play."

And while Sony and Microsoft forge ahead, muttering their mantra of technology über alles, Nintendo is quietly mulling the problem of bringing back the joy that many feel has left the pastime.

Revolution's "virtual console" is getting a lot of attention

That doesn't mean, however, that the company feels technology isn't worthy of attention, but rather that there is too much emphasis on how games look and too little on how they actually play and make you feel.

"The Revolution will use cutting edge technology," Miyamoto said in the same interview, speaking about the company's new console, "but it's ultimately about how that technology is used."

"We asked ourselves, 'Why would a family need or want to have a gaming console?' The answer is what's driving development of the Revolution."

What, exactly, the revolutionary aspects of the console are, though, is still unknown, as Nintendo has been especially coy when it comes to its new console, mentioning little about Revolution at the recent E3 conference and showing less. There's speculation about all kinds of fancy controller tomfoolery using gyroscopes and touch-screens, but we simply don't know right now.

Intentional or not, the hype surrounding Revolution in these early days has to do with the promise of downloads of games from the NES, Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64. (The new console will also play GameCube and, naturally, Revolution games as well.)

There has speculation today about how the company will release its older titles. A recent spate of reports suggest that Nintendo would be giving away its previous games for free, but these appear to be based on mistranslations of an article in Japanese magazine Famitsu.

Nintendo has not confirmed the reports, and George Harrison, vice president at the company, has already stated that Nintendo is thinking about how to price the downloads, and that third-party publishers would be able to decide for themselves how they want to release their old games.

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo Games