Nintendo EAD General Manager Shigeru Miyamoto must be looking at a rather busy holiday season. After all, New Super Mario Bros. Wii came out just over a week ago, while The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks is due at the end of the first week of December. So naturally, he is going around and speaking to a great many people, and naturally, as one of the top men at Nintendo, they have a great many things to ask him– not all of which are related to recent releases.
On his way, Miyamoto has not only shared his thoughts about the competitions’ motion control solutions, but also discussed his role in hardware development, even noting that he feels if he were to try to gain work for Nintendo as a new employee now, he might not even be hired.
The topic of rival motion controls from Microsoft and Sony often comes up in conversations with the pioneers of the genre. But while some staff, such as Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime, might feel that their entries are good for the industry as a whole, it seems that Miyamoto isn’t quite so sure.
Asked by Official Nintendo Magazine whether or not peripherals like Project Natal or Sony’s Wand would take away Nintendo’s unique selling point, Miyamoto responded: “Well, I should say that it could be taken as a compliment if others are following suit, by saying Nintendo was right in choosing a certain direction. But if you ask me if that is going to be good for the entire business, I really don’t know.”
“If everyone else is going to do exactly the same thing,” he continued, “unfortunately in this entertainment business that means less uniqueness, and uniqueness is what Nintendo has tried to realize.”
But even so, he believes that the emergence of these new input devices is no cause for worry for Nintendo or its fans. “We don’t look to the future in one direction only,” he said.
“When you say that one element of our uniqueness might have been lost, you don’t really have to be concerned about that, because Nintendo always tries to find something new. I hope you are looking forward to our challenge to discover this new uniqueness!”
Elsewhere, he spoke with Edge magazine (via MCV) about Nintendo’s recruitment process, and a need for high qualifications. He says that “Nintendo has become one of those companies that graduates from colleges and good universities really want to work for.”
“Because of that,” he continues, “the competition’s really become so fierce for positions. And that means that a lot of the recent recruits for Nintendo have tended to have the higher degree from the prestigious colleges and universities and whatnot. I often say to Mr Iwata: ‘If I was applying for a job here today, I, with my actual college degree, would probably not have been employed by Nintendo’.”
Fortunately, Miyamoto knows that a piece of paper isn’t everything, and reassures everyone that he gets involved in the interview process himself, looking for qualities which cannot be reflected by “official qualifications.”
“I might pick up on [applicants] and try to find out something really different within them which you can’t judge just by a college degree,” he said. “That’s one of the special little jobs I set myself.”
Finally, in a portion of the interview cited by Edge Online itself, Miyamoto reflects on how far his role at Nintendo has come, and how much more involved in the hardware development process he is now.
“”I don’t feel that my style of making videogames has changed so much,” Miyamoto said. “Over the years, I’ve tended to work on a project more deeply as the development phase gets closer to completion. The only difference is that when we’re working on something really new like Nintendogs or Wii Music, I tend to be very deeply involved a lot earlier. For the so-called ‘serious titles’ my involvement tends to be much greater towards the latter stage.”
“It might surprise you, but if I can think of any really significant change in my role over time, I’d probably say it’s my involvement with hardware design,” he added. “A long time ago, my role in designing the actual hardware was really limited – mostly it was down to designing the controller, or the controlling interface, or some of those special features that you want the hardware to include on the software side, to make design and development more efficient. It was all about simply making better software. But I think, probably from around the time of the DS, my involvement with hardware has significantly changed. With that project and onwards, I’ve been able to significantly oversee the overall development of the hardware as well as keeping an eye on the software side of things.”
For those who can get Edge, the new Christmas issue (E209) hits stores tomorrow, and Miyamoto discusses within its pages his typical day at the office, “how he created New Super Mario Bros Wii so that any Wii Fit player can feel right at home in it,” and of course, the recruitment and hardware excerpts noted above.
