Don’t drag Nintendo into ‘console wars’ says Super Mario creator as he dismisses ‘high tech specs’-GameCentral-Entertainment – Metro

Staying out of the console wars has served Nintendo well (AFP)

Shigeru Miyamoto has given an unusually candid insight into Nintendo’s thinking and why it doesn’t care about high-end graphics and other consoles.

Nintendo execs aren’t normally ones for giving interviews but thanks to the opening of the Nintendo Museum in Japan, Super Mario and Zelda creator Shigeru Miyamoto has been in a talkative mood, proclaiming in one interview this week that Nintendo will not use AI for creative tasks.

No doubt he told interviewers to make sure there were no questions about the Switch 2, but in a separate interview with Japanese website Famitsu he did discuss the whole concept of console wars, with an unusually detailed explanation of why Nintendo acts so very different to Sony and Microsoft.

‘I hope that they will see it and understand Nintendo,’ said Miyamoto of the museum’s visitors. ‘I hope that they will understand in this way and not involve Nintendo in the ‘console war’ that is said to be about high specs and how to improve the performance of game consoles.’

Although Nintendo is known today for having considerably lower tech consoles than Microsoft and Sony, that are often unable to run high-end third party games, this was not always the case.

The SNES, N64, and GameCube were amongst the most powerful consoles of their generation and it was only with the release of the Wii that Nintendo gave up trying to compete in terms of graphics technology – a strategy that has largely proven very successful.

Nevertheless, their involvement in online games is still very limited and after a brief period of experimentation with mobile gaming they’ve now all but entirely withdrawn from the market.

‘I think the most important thing is to have people from three generations come to this museum and think, ‘Nintendo is a company that is not related to the rival game manufacturers that are usually said, or to new cutting-edge technology,’ Miyamoto told Famitsu, via Google Translate.

‘Of course, we also do technology research. Until now, analysts and other places have said various things such as ‘Why don’t you do networks?’, ‘What about mobile?’, and ‘Why don’t you use cutting-edge chips?’, but if you look at the exhibits [at the museum] calmly, you will see that we are doing it properly.

‘But Nintendo has a history of waiting for the right moment to release products, only commercialising them when we believe the timing is perfect. I think that becomes clear through the museum, and it helps build trust in Nintendo. For our shareholders as well, this serves as a kind of mid- to long-term perspective, showing that they can trust us to manage the company properly.’

What, if anything, this might say about the Switch 2 is hard to guess at, but it certainly implies that it’s priority will not be cutting edge graphics.

Shigeru Miyamoto doesn’t care about console wars (Famitsu)

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