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Expert Insight From Miyamoto, Todd Hollenshead
njkid1 writes "Nintendo's legendary Shigeru Miyamoto, id Software's Todd Hollenshead and BioWare's Ray Muzyka offer up their expert advice on how to rise to the top of the industry at GameDaily. Miyamoto says his secret to success is that he makes sure sequels are entirely new games rather than just minor updates to the same engine. From Muzkya's comments in the article: 'BioWare's success is based entirely on the fact that we have a lot of very humble, hard-working and smart people at our company who are allowed to take creative risks. We put quality as our number one studio priority, because we believe it leads to long-term success, and as a result we don't release a game until we've achieved and exceeded our high quality targets.'"
Miyamoto is a genius and possibly a demigod, but sometimes what he says just doesn't make sense to me... I think that his success is largely attributable not to the fact that he innovates within his franchises (especially considering the Pokemon franchise, Twilight Princess going back to the "Ocarina" design, Mario Kart for DS being essentially MK64, and so forth), but with two other things:
1) it has to do with the fact that these franchises started off SO AMAZINGLY HIGH-QUALITY (for their time, at the very least) and retained that quality regardless of whether they were "re-imagined" or not. More of the same (design-wise) is great if it was awesome to begin with.
2) it has to do with the fact that some of Nintendo's innovation is also VERY HIGH-QUALITY. When I say this I mostly think of Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time, but the Wii as a piece of technology is another example. (The Virtual Boy isn't, hence the "some innovation" ^_^)
A more rubbish developer/publisher can innovate within its franchises all it wants, but it won't reach any level of success unless the franchises start strong and the innovation keeps them strong by being well designed/executed. Likewise, a strong developer does not need to innovate within a franchise (to the degree that Miyamoto suggested) to remain successful. Halo, Ninja Gaiden, DMC, Pokemon, Smash Bros, Mario Kart, and even Zelda are examples of very strong franchises that remain[ed] strong even without massive innovation in successive titles.
I like basketball!!1!
A big risk Nintendo took with the N64 was the controller. An analog joystick that players had to get used to -- it could have failed completely but the design was solid enough (and play control in Mario 64 tight enough; forget about Shadows of the Empire haha good grief, awesome game but the controls... T_T) that it took off.
The 3D jump had already started before N64. Nintendo just showed people how to do it *right.*
I like basketball!!1!
I think the jury is still out on Super Mario: Galaxy. I've read a few different impressions from various journalists who play tested some levels at E3 this summer and they've said that it's amazing. If you compare Super Mario Bros. to Super Mario Bros. 2 (The Japanese version, not the American one.) how much changed between the games? They were both 2D side-scrolling platformers with a lot in common. Super Mario Bros. 3 was also fairly similar, but did feature some upgrades. In a similar fashion, I don't expect huge changes to Galaxy. It's still going to be a 3D platformer, but from what I've heard that concept for the game allowed for level design that easily lends itself to a great camera, something that can easily get in the way in other 3D games, platformer or not. I don't expect Nintendo to come out with some blatantly obvious, mind-blowing feature that will change the series or the genre, but I expect there to be an incredible amount of subtle changes that overall create an incredible play experience. The overall package might not be innovative or original, but I'm willing to bet that some components of the game will be.