Ever since the Nintendo Wii, Nintendo’s home consoles have seemed a lap or two behind the competition. The lesser processing power and graphics have generated plenty of jabs and jokes towards the company, but it never stopped Nintendo from laughing all the way to the bank. In a new interview, Shigeru Miyamoto expresses that consumer trends are overall going in this direction, with many players growing ambivalent about the cutting edge.
“I think that customers are no longer just looking for specs,” Miyamoto tells Famitsu. “I think the ideal is that ‘if you buy the software, you can play it on the device you have at home.’ Smartphones are ‘everywhere,’ aren’t they? I think that’s one ideal. But Nintendo has always been ‘providing gameplay that only we can create,’ including the interface, and compared to smartphones, it has the advantage of being able to respond quickly and having a high degree of freedom because it only requires one architecture and support for one piece of hardware.”
Miyamoto feels that convenience is winning out over processor pushing games, and Nintendo has baked it into their overall strategy. The Nintendo Switch successfully blended handheld mobility and home console dedication together, and the shine has continued for Switch 2 sales.
While many big hits still push for the highest fidelity possible, it’s growing clear that it’s no longer the main attraction for most players. Hellblade or Death Stranding may have marvelling visuals, but they are constantly circled by the likes of Fortnite, Roblox and Five Nights at Freddy’s, all of which can be played on a phone. Last holiday season, the Xbox was humbled by sales of the Nex Playground, which runs the kind of games that would be considered budget-friendly on the 360.
As costs continue to rise for processor-pushing games, not just for development cycles but all consumer hardware, it’s inevitable that more players will be priced out of the shiniest software. Certain kinds of games, across PC and next-gen consoles, may return to becoming a premium experience, while more players engage with affairs like Meccha Chameleon. Continuing apace, it’ll also force the major publishers to reckon with their own philosophies, whether they’ll want revolutionary showpieces or something more accessible.
This all leaves Nintendo in a happy middle point, a lane they’ve occupied for over a decade. If the industry crashes around them, again, the lean approach and library of games people go nuts for will likely allow them to coast on through. “We believe that reducing the amount of work as much as possible is important for making development more efficient,” says Miyamoto, “so considering that, I think we’ve created a pretty good environment.”