14 DAY TRIAL // The game industry has a few prominent figures, people who changed the way we look at games and truly pushed the whole entertainment segment to a whole new level. Such a man is Nintendo's head game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, the one who is responsible for the iconic franchises Mario and Zelda.
The Nintendo executive has been focusing his ideas in order to extract the full potential of the Wii, and to make it more appealing to the big number of people who bought it recently. The designer has talked with Edge magazine about how hard it is to find themes for games that are universally appealing to every kind of person. He goes on to say that game developers need to put themselves into their customers' shoes and see which theme attracts them and which doesn't.
“It is challenging to find something universal but, after all, that’s my job as I see it. Until the time that I am in a position to tell you the next subject, we can only confirm that we are working on the next Mario and the next Zelda, etc. In terms of new games, we need to stand with the potential customer’s viewpoint. Of course, we have new ideas in mind all the time, but the challenging part is whether they will really be widely appreciated by users.”
It does seem that even Miyamoto, who is famous for his unlimited supply of ideas, is starting to see how not every game can appeal to a worldwide audience. Although Nintendo seems to have the recipe for success, as its games are selling out across all territories, things can always change. This goes hand in hand with the statement made by another reputed Japanese game designer, Hideo Kojima, who recently talked about the fact that developers can't make a game that will be popular on all the markets that easily.
Hopefully Miyamoto will continue to deliver the high-quality games he has gotten us used to and take game development to new heights.