David Jaffe suggests Nintendo should try selling the company to Disney, wants them to do something new

David Jaffe has a suggestion for Nintendo: try selling the company to Disney. He believes “they clearly understand marketing, they clearly understand their audience.”

Now, Jaffe’s words shouldn’t be taken as him looking to openly blast Nintendo. While speaking with HipHopGamer, Jaffe acknowledged his respect and admiration for the company. The thing is, he wants them to do something new.

Jaffe labeled Shigeru Miyamoto’s contributions to gaming as “industry-altering and super important”. However, he feels “some new blood getting in there” could only improve Nintendo.

Jaffe’s comments in full:

I say this with love as a fan of Nintendo. But if I was Nintendo, I’d be sitting my a** down trying to figure out how to sell my company to Walt Disney, because if you look at sort of what they have done sort of the reverence they’ve had towards Marvel, if you look at what seems to be happening with Star Wars and the Lucas brand they’ve acquired, they clearly understand marketing, they clearly understand their audience. To imagine going to a Disney Land park and having an entire land – like not just like Tomorrow Land but others like Nintendo Land – and sort of integrating that into that world, doing more with those brands.

You know end of the day, we’re all standing gratefully if you’re lucky in the shadows, the very long and powerful shadows of Miyamoto. But ultimately, he said himself he’s setting up younger developers to step in, he’s talking about retirement. I’m not a big Pikmin fan, I don’t think he’s making a game that really has spoken to me as a gamer in awhile. But what he has done has been industry-altering and super important and his characters live on and they should. But I think the idea of, you know, some new blood getting in there appreciating what they’ve got and doing more with it would be awesome…

…I’m a big Nintendo fan, but I just think it’s time to bring in some new blood that really is going to appreciate what they’ve got and bring it to a new generation and do some new s***. Never lose that essence, never lose that core, but for the love of f****** God, do some new s***.

Thanks to Jake for the tip.