Miyamoto on PS3, Industry

The Guardian Gamesblog has a talk up with Shigeru Miyamoto, where they get into his views on the PS3 delay, and the industry as a whole. From the article: "Any announcement about PS3 will affect Nintendo. But we don't see it as a competition between the two consoles, although the customers always do. It depends on what expectations people have of the PS3 and Revolution. Sony has taken a long time to create their machine but it is obvious that the direction we (Nintendo) are taking is different to the PS3."

Comments

RTFA? No need for that.

[amrust]

His views on the PS3 were basically covered in the quote.

No suprise

[the computer guy nex]

Nintendo is trying for a much different audience. Not the college kids getting together for Halo/Ghost Recon/Counterstrike matches, not the 80hours/week MMORPG addicts, not the fans who buy consoles just for sports games.

Nintendo is going for the casual "family" audience. Nintendo is going for what made the original NES great. I hope they can pull it off. Nintendo right now is competing with themselves, not MS or Sony.

Re:No suprise

[dpilot]

IMHO it's a matter of price. In the XBox/PS2/Gamecube generation the price separation was less, but still there. In this coming generation the price separation is widening. To buy the XBox-360/PS3, gaming has to be a higher priority in your life to justify the money. That narrows it down to harder-core gamers, which tends to mean more intense games. The market it appears that Nintendo is going after wants a bit more, the way technology always seems to deliver, but isn't willing to make it a high priority, financially.

Re:No suprise

[ectal]

I think Nintendo is mostly betting on the existence of a market that doesn't want to spend $400-500 for a console that has a huge catalog of $60 titles that can mostly be sliced into categories like Yet Another Shooter Part IV and Major Sports Game Early January 2007 Edition.

In other words, it's all about the software. A good comparison comes from looking at the Nintendo DS and the PSP. The PSP is an amazing and sexy little piece of hardware with a catalog of same-old, same-old games. The DS is an unsexy, somewhat dated piece of hardware with a great catalog of games that often defy categorization (of course, it's sprinkled with the usual trash titles, as well). The DS is dominating the PSP.

But just because Nintendo's strategy is working so well in the handheld market, with they've owned for years, that doesn't mean any of this will matter when the Revolution comes out. The home console market is not the handheld market. I'd like to see the Revolution do well, and I think it will. But I'm a little bit of a fanboy, just praying it doesn't sink.

If nothing else, we're set up for a much more interesting console battle than the last round.

The real question is...

[steveo777]

... can Miyamoto's vision of a PS3/XBox 360 peacefully coexhisting with a Revolution in the same living room be real? He states it himself when he said that the customer sees the systems as competition. He's going to have to find a way to convince everyone in the world that they are both worth the time and money.

I love Nintendo, but it seems like Miyamoto's sitting there, looking at the cup of hemlock. Just like Socrates. Both are/were in high spirits and thought their course of action was for the best. Hopefully Nintendo avoids this fate.

On further reflection, it's not quite that good of an analogy, as Socrates was ordered to drink his...

Miyamoto-san in headlights

[Rob T Firefly]

This is the most awesome photograph ever.

Surprise! Nintendo can be both.

[ianscot]

I agree that Nintendo is trying to pitch to a family audience the other two have been outcooling themselves away from. It's not necessarily that they wanted to be focused only on their core of support, though. The DS had launch titles and so on being pitched with the supposedly-edgy theme "Touching is okay," and seemed to be attempting to bring their demographic up the age chart a while.

It's not clear that it happened for them. In retrospect it looks like the DS has thrived because it was trying to do something a little different, unlike the competition -- but did it really crack that older demographic?

Personally I am the family market, with two 12-year-olds. I'm also the older market: I'm 38, and I've bought my share of games, though none for myself in the last year-plus.

The Revolution is where my money will go, no question, for the simple reason that it's going to be far less expensive to buy for my kids, it has a tiny sense of innocence to it which I think you kind of fricking want in a game, and it's going to be actually interesting to see new titles because of the funky controller.

So they got me in both senses. Even if I was just buying for myself, what would make me want a PS3 or XBox? The incremental changes in hardware specs are dullsville. Shaq sweats on screen, but the game mechanics still don't let him rebound with any realism at all. At that price, too, for my limited taste in games now, no way. (That's leaving alone the cost of real HD, which I'm not going to be picking up in the next year or two.)

Both MS and Sony have vastly overshot me, as a market. Nintendo hasn't, and they're trying to rediscover the fun in the whole thing. They win my cash.

Wow. What a GREAT news story! (sigh)

[DorkusMasterus]

So Miyamoto-san thinks there will be gamers for both the PS3 AND the Revolution? Their approach to video games are different? Wow! Who'da'thunkit?

Slow news day, eh? :)

Sony and MS have overshot me completely

[ianscot]

38-year-old father of 12-year-old twins here.

I have no interest in either the cost or the catalogs for either the 360 or the prospective PS3. The Revolution interests me both for my kids and for myself, and is far easier on the pocketbook to contemplate.

The other two consoles are positing the existence of a much, much wider hardcore gamers' market than exists, and pricing themselves out of a significant share of that.

Nintendo is also, astonishingly, the only player that's projecting any sense of fricking fun with its products. It's amazing.