Meet the man behind the Wii

Kristin Kalning Games editor • E-mail

LOS ANGELES - In the game industry, there is no one bigger than Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto.

He is the creator of some of the best-selling, most long-lived and beloved video game franchises ever, including “Donkey Kong,” the Mario series and “The Legend of Zelda.” More recently, he was heavily involved in the creation of the Wii, the company’s smash hit console, which helped earn him a spot in Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential list in 2007. More recently, Miyamoto has lent his talents to the best-selling “Super Mario Galaxy” for the Wii and the exercise game “Wii Fit.”

At this week’s E3 video-game industry summit in Los Angeles, he raised the curtain on his latest creation, “Wii Music,” which simulates playing real musical instruments. A musician himself, Miyamoto told me through a translator that he hopes the game will be something that people will play as a way to experience the joy of making music.

“I feel like we’ve finally created a true music game, rather than, say, a rhythm game,” he said. “For me, as a musician, it brings the fun of creating music to those who aren’t able to experience it.”

Many of Miyamoto’s experiences and hobbies make their way into Nintendo’s product lineup. The DS title “Nintendogs” is based on his experience buying and raising a dog with his family. “Wii Fit” famously came from the game designer’s experience with a new exercise regimen.

Below are excerpts from my conversation with Miyamoto about the company’s success with the Wii, how the move to the mainstream has helped break down the perception that video games were violent games, and whether raising a dog on a DS makes you less likely to raise a dog in real life.

Q. I’m very curious about Nintendo’s decision to go after a casual audience when their competitors were chasing after hardcore gamers and HD. I’ve heard it said that Nintendo looked at the population of Japan and saw it was aging, and for its survival, it needed to diversify its audience. Is that accurate?

A. While it is true that the population in Japan is aging, that wasn’t the impetus for the strategic decisions that we’ve made with Wii. What we were looking at was what we thought was a worldwide issue, which is that video games had gradually become something that were only enjoyed by people who were core gaming fans, and not something that were enjoyed by the wider population.

While other game makers had felt that there was a future in taking the current style of games and making them more complex and more advanced, and that that would be able to provide them with future market for their product, we really came to the belief that video games should be more than just more complex versions of what we’ve seen in the past. We felt that video games should instead include a variety of different elements and a variety of different styles of entertainment that can appeal to a much broader audience. And that that was really where the future lay.

Q. Following on that, it was a risk to come out with a console that deliberately didn’t court hardcore gamers, and with such a different control scheme — particularly after the GameCube (which enjoyed only moderate success). At what point did you know that the risk had paid off?

A. The first that I’d want to clarify is that the concept that Wii intentionally does not cater to core gamers is probably a misconception, and perhaps one that’s almost a PR tactic used by some of the other companies to paint us as a company that’s not targeting core gamers. But in fact, while we may not be focusing on the high-end graphics and technology that core gamers would typically be drawn to, the types of games we create, and continue to create, are certainly games that people who play games would certainly want to continue playing.

I think that there’s probably one other element to it, and that’s that our view of how we use E3 has changed. For a very long time, E3 was an event where — and certainly Nintendo included — catered specifically to the core gamer. Now we look at more … an opportunity for us to introduce new concepts and new types of play that we intend to bring to the broader audience, particularly because of the media that gathers at E3 now.

So while attending an E3 event like this, they might be given the impression that Nintendo is no longer focusing on the games that appeal to the core gamer, in fact we’re still working on many of those titles, but it’s just not the type of event where we’ll be showcasing that anymore.

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