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Nintendo Legend Miyamoto: Mario Needs To Evolve To Survive (cnet.com)

Posted by msmash on from the 2016-101 dept.

Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo's legendary game designer, and his fellow developers were tinkering with a "one-button control scheme" for Mario, where all a player can do is make Mario jump. This dead simple idea became the crux of the company's new Super Mario Run, one of the most anticipated mobile-app games of the year. CNET adds: "We found a great way to make an accessible Mario game and bring it to iPhone and reach a lot of people," Miyamoto said Thursday through his translator. "That's when we decided to make Super Mario Run." Super Mario Run may become a critical next step for Nintendo, which has struggled for years to maintain its relevance in gaming against Sony's PlayStation and Microsoft's Xbox, as well as a surge of mobile gaming apps. This year, it garnered some attention from Pokemon Go, though it's only partly involved in that game. Now, two more Nintendo mobile gaming apps -- Animal Crossing and Fire Emblem -- are on the way, which could provide the Japanese company with a big boost.

2 of 88 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Flappy birds clone by RKThoadan · · Score: 3, Interesting

    In counterpoint to that I think Nintendo is the most adaptable of the 3 console makers.

    Last Christmas we agreed that it was time for a new console in our house. I initially assumed it would be a PS4 or XBone, but as I looked into the games available everything I was interested in on PS4 or XBone will also be released for PC. The PS4 and XBone are so similar to a PC that I saw no point in them. I went with the Wii U and am quite happy with it. I doubt I'll be getting a Switch next year, but I can envision getting one at some point. I can't envision getting a console that's mostly indistinguishable from a PC and Nintendo is the only console maker that seems to offer anything else.

  2. Re:Flappy birds clone by scubamage · · Score: 3, Interesting
    We picked up a Wii-U because my wife likes Nintendo games, and honestly with a kid on the way they are more appropriate to all audiences. The console itself is excellent - the fact that wii mode allows the running of homebrew software lets you leverage the extremely large library of homebrew that is out there for the wii, some of which has been re-hacked to be compatible with the wii u pro controller. So, my Wii U runs games from turbo grafix 16, NES, SNES, Genesis, N64, Gamecube, Wii, and of course, the wii U. I have nearly limitless access to gaming through that thing. Could I do it on a PC? Sure, maybe if I was by myself. But it's hard to sit down at a single PC with 4 people and play a game together. I can sit 4 people on my couch and play a game together with controllers without a problem using the Wii U. Which brings up another important point...

    The nintendo catalog tends to be focused on couch co-op. The PS4 and Xbox tend to cater to more mature audiences, and they tend to almost always focus on online multiplayer. While online multiplayer is still playing with other people, it's really you, sitting by yourself in a room, talking over some tubes to other people. It's just not the same as sitting down together and playing a game.