Shigeru Miyamoto Says His Rivals Are Boring, Samey

[Spartan448]

To a certain extent he's right and to a certain extent he's wrong. I can't help but say that for a company that really only makes money off of Mario, Pokemon, Star Fox, Legend of Zelda, Smash Bros., and a few other long-running series, it is a bit hypocritical for him to call out the rest of the industry for constantly just re-releasing the same popular IPs repeatedly. That being said, however, he can make a case on his second argument that the focus on "cinematic experiences" is overall detrimental for gaming as a whole. Assassins Creed hasn't been truly exciting since AC: Brotherhood - 4 had decent gameplay but didn't work as an AC title, would have worked better as a separate IP. Halo stopped being really good after ODST - there hasn't really been any sense of excitement to them since then - no running through The Library with one bar of health while being chased by the entire Flood horde, no epic Warthog dash to the end of the game with explosions and parts flying everywhere all while things are still shooting at you. CoD had World at War and even that wasn't all that great. Borderlands has never really been anything more than "shoot everything until it dies". Bayonetta 2 was very much a toned down Bayonetta. These are all games where the developers have been saying they want a more "cinematic experience". On the other hand, look at the new Pokemon remakes. What do you get to do after beating the Elite 4? You get to fly into space on Rayquaza to fight Deoxys in space, or something like that. And I know it's old, but the entirety of No More Heroes and No More Heroes 2 was a huge departure from the norm, and both were endless amounts of mindless fun and dismemberment. And going for a more modern example in the same genre, Metal Gear Rising has to be one of my favorite games of all time, if only because you can literally slice through almost everything in the game. Also, flipping Metal Gears like it's nothing, and then having a sword fight with one. If our games keep trying to be like cinema, we're going to have games that are at least as boring as movies these days are. Gravity was a curiosity but was otherwise kind of slow. Interstellar was pretty but that's about it. JJ Abrams has made a complete mess of two Star Trek movies now by trying to force the IP in a direction it was not meant to go in, and he's probably going to screw up Star Wars as well.

And yet we as gamers have to partially accept responsibility for this. AC Unity was hyped to no end, and hell it was partially something we had wanted - an AC game set during the French Revolution. Problem was that it's a buggy piece of shit and on top of that they took something that had the potential to be a huge departure from the series and instead copy/pasted the usual plot into the game. The new Borderlands game is largely just really, really boring. The only new things are low-G environments and laser guns. There is no reason why this had to be a separate game instead of a BL2 DLC. Or better yet, part of the original game - Play through Jack's story, and then fight the characters you leveled up and equipped in BL2 proper. And people couldn't have been happier with it. Reviews on Steam are overwhelmingly positive, and the game was a top seller when it released. And clearly there is a reason why Nintendo's stock prices jump whenever a new Smash Bros. or Pokemon or Mario comes out. New IPs rarely beat out nostalgia, and it's impossible to avoid fighting it because all the other developers are planning to release their nostalgia trips during the prime sales times.

tl;dr: Miyamoto is being a bit of a hypocrite here, but at least he can claim that his games are actually fun, though if he wants to see market dominance move away from "Cinematic experiences", than we as gamers need to stop overhyping or buying these "cinematic experiences" altogether. And that goes for all platforms - just because a game is on PC does not automatically justify its existance.

 

[kael013]

So what's the benefit of exclusives to consumers...?

The developers can focus all their efforts and creativity to get the best experience in a single console, instead of making 2 or 3 versions of the same game (with different specifications) at the same time. If anything it probably would at least be less buggy (I'm looking at you, Assassins Creed Unity)

Or the devs could release for one platform, then release ports one at a time for the other platforms. That way all the technical stuff can be as refined as hell [i/]and[/i] everyone can play it. Heck, there's a good amount of downtime between the end of game development and release; that time could be spent on porting instead of extra store- and edition-exclusive DLC. But noooo, that second part would be too much work. Best to keep it on one platform so people have to spend $300 for a console to play one bloody game.

 

[loa]

Anti-consumer is making consumer's choice irrelevant. Anti-consumer is making the games not to use one console hardware at its full potential, because the experience on the other consoles would feel worse. What's the use of having a better console if you can't play better games on it?

So what's the benefit of exclusives to consumers...?

The developers can focus all their efforts and creativity to get the best experience in a single console, instead of making 2 or 3 versions of the same game (with different specifications) at the same time. If anything it probably would at least be less buggy (I'm looking at you, Assassins Creed Unity)

Seems more like a problem on the end of the developers than a "benefit" for the consumer to me.
Not rushing and pumping out an unfinished piece of garbage or only releasing on 1 platform and on others later might fix that.

 

[CaitSeith]

So what's the benefit of exclusives to consumers...?

The developers can focus all their efforts and creativity to get the best experience in a single console, instead of making 2 or 3 versions of the same game (with different specifications) at the same time. If anything it probably would at least be less buggy (I'm looking at you, Assassins Creed Unity)

Or the devs could release for one platform, then release ports one at a time for the other platforms. That way all the technical stuff can be as refined as hell [i/]and[/i] everyone can play it. Heck, there's a good amount of downtime between the end of game development and release; that time could be spent on porting instead of extra store- and edition-exclusive DLC. But noooo, that second part would be too much work. Best to keep it on one platform so people have to spend $300 for a console to play one bloody game.

You mean like a timed exclusive?

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

Meanwhile the only reason that Sony doesn't really have any given series on every console is because they don't even make their own games, yet even they see a lot of repetition in the form of God of War, Uncharted, and Ratchet and Clank;

Um...you do realize that Naughty Dog and Santa Monica, the makers of the God of War series, are first party right?

I'll give you Santa Monica, but it's easy to mistake Naughty Dog as second party since they were around for a long time before Sony acquired them during the PS2 era.

If you don't count those, then what about Japan Studios, or as they are known as: Sony Computer Entertaiment Japan Studios. They have made many series over time, and tend to make new IPs such as Gravity Rush.

Fair enough. I guess it's easy to forget that those are all the same studio since, like you said, they tend to not do anything with the franchises after the first few games. As someone who has paid little attention to Sony over the past decade or so (I'm still bitter about the PS2's shoddy design causing mine to get bricked), combined with the way that a lot of those games faded into obscurity pretty much right after their release, I always just figured that a lot of the titles on their wiki page were from random obscure indie devs.

 

[Artaneius]

Excuse me Miyamoto, but a business purpose in life is to make money. I'm sorry that you failed in basic economics class and had to take the path of the dreamer (artist). Be thankful that you actually made a decent living doing so because most artists usually end up starving to death and/or become a burden to their families. Most of us actually live in the real world where money is God and everybody better worship him or starve to death. That is all.

 

[xaszatm]

Also how dare they try and focus on the thing that makes video games different from every other entertainment medium on the planet instead of a story. Shame on them indeed.

Thing is, if any company can show that games can do stories, it's Nintendo. But Miyamoto has such a deep hatred of them he feels that no games need them. Again, I point to what happened to Paper Mario Sticker Star as to how that went.

I've got to be honest, I'm sick of the Paper Mario Sticker Star being the example here because that wasn't Miyamoto's doing. His part was him saying the story was too similar to the Thousand Year Door. However, that wasn't the end of it. The people behind Paper Mario held a Club Nintendo Survey asking if people wanted a more story based game or more wacky adventure. Less than 1% choose a story based game and that was the ultimate reason why Paper Mario Sticker Star had a lackluster story. The fault is entirely on Nintendo fans here.

A better example would be Four Sword Adventures. The game did originally have a unique story and characters before Miyamoto axed that and gave us that game.

OT: I read the interview a while back. At least no one is talking about the false title of the source page. The interview itself is an interesting outlook on how one of the biggest developers designs his games. I'm not going to say it's the best way to make a game, as different types of games require different types of development cycles, but it is certainly A way and one that shouldn't be underlooked by other developers.

 

[Roxas1359]

snip

It's an easy mistake people make at times, so I don't fault you. Nintendo and Sony have the habit of not changing the name of a studio they acquire, so then that studio can retain its own identity. Nintendo did that with Retro Studios and more recently Monolith Soft, while Sony has done it with Naughty Dog and has Santa Monica and Sucker Punch omit the Sony part if they want to.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

Excuse me Miyamoto, but a business purpose in life is to make money.

Then point to any other game company that is able to get in the black and not having gigantic deficits from incompetent business management. Because if the point of a business is to make money then no one else but Nintendo is accomplishing that. Because that's the funny thing; all the competition likes to think of themselves as hot-shot businessmen, but their ineptitude in business is quite clear. And the ultimate stinger is that it's Shiggy pointing it out. Because he knows better than anyone.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

while i somewhat agree with his views i dont think games being multiplat is the problem

 

[OldNewNewOld]

Excuse me Miyamoto, but a business purpose in life is to make money.

Gee, I could swear that he acknowledges that in the interview and that you didn't even read it but I must be imagining things.

"What the other companies are doing makes business sense," Miyamoto said.

 

[MrHide-Patten]

Not that he doesn't have a point, game play should influence a story more then cut-scenes, buuuuht, when it comes to things being samey, isn't that a big Pot calling the Kettle Black. Isn't the big reasons that people love the likes of Metroid and Zelda because of their stories, I don't quite see that level of affection for Nintendo's other franchises which you could say are pretty sparse on the stories.

Also since going into this latest gen all I can really think of how bullshit exclusivity is, unless you're using the tech in a way that really improves a game or makes it fundamentally different (Metroid Prime 3's use of the Wii for example), then there is no point, it's consumer blackmail.

 

[Toadfish1]

Oooh, somebody is jealous of other platofmrs success now that Nintendos sales are in the crapper and they're not going to improve.

 

[Mr C]

Hell just do an HD remake of say the Ape Escape series for the PS4. Ape Escape is extremely popular in Japan and it'd be great if more kid games made it to the newest system. For right now I'm just waiting for the newest Ratchet and Clank game by Insomniac that comes out next year before I buy one.

What a thought, I love Ape Escape, especially AE 2001 where you run around with a vacuum-cleaner stealing monkey pants, surreal and entertaining!!! Shame it was never released outside of Japan :-(

 

[V4Viewtiful]

snip.

snip.

I've got to be honest, I'm sick of the Paper Mario Sticker Star being the example here because that wasn't Miyamoto's doing. His part was him saying the story was too similar to the Thousand Year Door. However, that wasn't the end of it. The people behind Paper Mario held a Club Nintendo Survey asking if people wanted a more story based game or more wacky adventure. Less than 1% choose a story based game and that was the ultimate reason why Paper Mario Sticker Star had a lackluster story. The fault is entirely on Nintendo fans here.

A better example would be Four Sword Adventures. The game did originally have a unique story and characters before Miyamoto axed that and gave us that game.

OT: I read the interview a while back. At least no one is talking about the false title of the source page. The interview itself is an interesting outlook on how one of the biggest developers designs his games. I'm not going to say it's the best way to make a game, as different types of games require different types of development cycles, but it is certainly A way and one that shouldn't be underlooked by other developers.

You get the thumbs up for that.

#

Consumers often shouldn't have that much influence on dev.elopment if it ultimately leads to problems, Miyamoto's methods have worked but in tandem to adapt to every cycle in some way or another

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Of course all the Mario games are different.....an the spinoffs. He is the biggest sell out ever with the amount of Mario games. Even Pikmin is on 3 i think. He never does anything different or new.

 

[Snotnarok]

I hate to jump on calling him/Nintendo out for rehashes but Nintendo is pretty much anti-new IP.
For all the crap anyone can try and give CoD and the other AAA games, many of Nintendo's games have existed from the 80's on. Yes- I'm fully aware they're not a yearly affair- because they have more than 1 IP to push out the door so they mitigate that with dropping another series out the door instead.

Which is fine as most of them are usually polished games (Other M withstanding), but they at every opportunity fight against new IPs.

Kirby's Epic Yarn, Smash Brothers, Star Fox Adventures and other games they've put out were meant to have new characters as stars but they flat out switched it up and shoved their existing characters in ....because it would sell better. And they're probably right, but they're just as bad in many ways.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

Oooh, somebody is jealous of other platofmrs success now that Nintendos sales are in the crapper and they're not going to improve.

Except we all know that's a lie considering that people have been saying about that before with Nintendo and they're always inevitably proven wrong. It also doesn't help that they're pretty much the only company turning a profit at this point while everyone else is scrambling to disguise how their ineptitude has caused profit margins to plunge into the negative zone.

 

[Toadfish1]

Oooh, somebody is jealous of other platofmrs success now that Nintendos sales are in the crapper and they're not going to improve.

Except we all know that's a lie considering that people have been saying about that before with Nintendo and they're always inevitably proven wrong. It also doesn't help that they're pretty much the only company turning a profit at this point while everyone else is scrambling to disguise how their ineptitude has caused profit margins to plunge into the negative zone.

You do know that the profits for Microsofty and Sony's game divisions are higher than Nintendo's, right?

And exactly when were people proven wrong? WHen the WiiU was outsold by the Ps4? When it was outsold by the Xbone? Or when the 3DS failed to match sales of the PsP?

 

[kael013]

Or the devs could release for one platform, then release ports one at a time for the other platforms. That way all the technical stuff can be as refined as hell [i/]and[/i] everyone can play it. Heck, there's a good amount of downtime between the end of game development and release; that time could be spent on porting instead of extra store- and edition-exclusive DLC. But noooo, that second part would be too much work. Best to keep it on one platform so people have to spend $300 for a console to play one bloody game.

You mean like a timed exclusive?

Yes, exactly like a timed exclusive. The timed exclusive model seems to be the best in this age of corporate greed as it takes the best from both contemporary models: the polish from exclusives and the inclusiveness of multi-plats. On the other hand, the timer is usually set really long and the "exclusive" is rarely released on all viable platforms...

This is why I went PC gaming: everything gets an emulator eventually.