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Wii Fit (Wii)
Miyamoto & Wii Fit
Miyamoto & Wii Fit
1 Up - April 17, 2008
Submitted by apujanata (14935) at 6:58PM PST on April 17, 2008
As the creator of classic franchises like Mario, Zelda and Donkey Kong, Miyamoto's involvement with Wii Fit is significant. Much has been made of the fact that the game evolved from his personal interest in fitness, just as Pikmin grew out of his love for gardening, but he admits that his high-profile role in the game's creation was borne somewhat of necessity.
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1This part of interview is interesting too:
Still, the term "enhanced versions" is telling; while fans have eagerly devoured Nintendo's high-profile releases in recent years, one need not look hard to find a growing undercurrent of dissatisfaction with the fact that Nintendo's most original ideas have been invested in what many gamers sneeringly called "non-games." Meanwhile, they complain, long-running franchises like Mario Kart and Smash Bros. are short on innovation and heavy on the familiar. Miyamoto indicates that this ultimately why the company has begun pushing in new, unfamiliar directions.
"I think it's easy to take an existing game or style, make it more fun, and sell it," he says. "But I think it's better to think of new ideas, new styles of games that people aren't expecting, and find a way to bring that to them. Rather than focusing on the fact that there's one audience or another, I simply want to make games that everyone can enjoy. I don't really look at it in [terms of casual versus hardcore] when we're creating software.
"I think we'd gotten to a point where videogames were something that everyone could no longer enjoy. As a designer, I'm always focusing on what is fun -- ideas that people can enjoy. For me, I'm trying to entertain as many people as I can, creating games that the widest number of people can enjoy.
"Of course, that being said, we do have the existing teams at Nintendo working on the kinds of products we've always made over the years. The Zelda team is forming again to work on new games! But to me, it's about finding these new interactive experiences and bringing them to people."
Did he mean that the Zelda team is forming again to work on original IPs?[ Oracle ] [ Level 21 ] [ Rank: 297 ]bids
1Miyamoto also dropped hints about the possibility of emulating (with the Wii Balance Board) snowboarding, pedals in racing games, and tapping your foot in music games. He also mentioned the possibility of putting a sort of easter egg in a future Mario game that would have a mode that utilized the Wii Balance Board.
@apujanata,
There has been a reveal of a high-quality shooter being developed in the U.S. by IGN as The Conduit - where the developer directly commented that other developers have not been pushing the Wii and have been basically lazy.[ Oracle ] [ Level 20 ] [ Rank: 294 ]bids
2More from link :
With both Wii Fit and Wii Sports, the work that I was doing was more that of a designer," Miyamoto says. "With younger game directors and designers, there's a tendency to look at the types of games that have come in the past -- how they can build on those experiences and enhance them. With Wii, we've felt a need to start from zero in a lot of places and create something entirely new.
So in order to resolve a lot of that uneasiness and help the team feel more confident, I unfortunately needed to take a lead role and stand at the forefront of that process and help them realize that it really is OK to start from scratch and build from there."
As the people around you who haven't been playing video games start to try them, that's going to change people's impressions of what video gaming means. What we're trying to do is to create a better environment for their hobby.
"The first-person shooter market in Japan -- for whatever reason, people just don't like them," he notes. "My hope is that we can convince Japanese gamers who until now haven't played first-person shooters to play those games in a way that they can enjoy them. We're preparing to release the Wii Zapper in Japan. Our hope is that by releasing it with Link's Crossbow Training, the Zapper can give gamers an easier way to appreciate shooters, and at the same time open the door for all the really high-quality shooters being developed in the U.S. to make their way to Japan."[ Oracle ] [ Level 30 ] [ Rank: 14935 ]bids
11As the creator of classic franchises like Mario, Zelda and Donkey Kong, Miyamoto's involvement with Wii Fit is significant. Much has been made of the fact that the game evolved from his personal interest in fitness, just as Pikmin grew out of his love for gardening, but he admits that his high-profile role in the game's creation was borne somewhat of necessity.[ Oracle ] [ Level 30 ] [ Rank: 14935 ]
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He could mean that or that they were forming again to work on a new Zelda game. The comment could be taken either way. The Zelda team getting together to work on a true Wii iteration of Zelda would not be very suprising.