Miyamoto doesn’t want people dragging Nintendo into console wars

Legendary video game developer Shigeru Miyamoto wants Nintendo to be left out of the console wars.

Miyamoto was speaking with the press this week ahead of the Nintendo Museum opening in Kyoto, Japan. He gave insight as to why the museum is opening, stating that he hopes attendees will get a true feel for what the company is all about.

He went on to add – with a laugh – that he hopes people “refrain from dragging Nintendo into competitions like the so-called ‘console wars,’ which focus on high specs and hardware performance”. True to its more recent history, the company wants to explore technology in a way that’s uniquely Nintendo.

A rough translation of Miyamoto’s comments are as follows (as relayed by Famitsu):

“If the goal is to preserve all of Nintendo’s past assets so that people can understand what Nintendo is, then it’s not just about the employees; we now have people spanning three generations who know about Nintendo. It would be great if those people could see it and understand what Nintendo is. I hope that through this, people will understand and refrain from dragging Nintendo into competitions like the so-called ‘console wars,’ which focus on high specs and hardware performance (laughs). Nintendo will continue to use the various technologies available today to create things in a way that’s unique to Nintendo. We’re not just limited to games; we’ll also be involved in films and will continue to create a variety of entertainment content. I thought this would be a good opportunity for people to understand that, and that’s why we made this.

I believe the most important thing is for various people to visit this museum and come away thinking, ‘Nintendo is a company that’s not at all related to the game industry competition or cutting-edge technology that people usually talk about.’ Of course, we conduct technology research. In the past, analysts and others have said things like, ‘Why isn’t Nintendo focusing on networking?’ or ‘What about mobile?’ or ‘Why aren’t you using cutting-edge chips?’ However, if people calmly look at the exhibits, they’ll realize that we’ve actually been working on those things all along. But Nintendo has a history of waiting for the right moment to release products, only commercializing them when we believe the timing is perfect. I think that becomes clear through the museum, and it helps build trust in Nintendo. For our shareholders as well, this serves as a kind of mid- to long-term perspective, showing that they can trust us to manage the company properly.”

This wasn’t the only interesting thing Miyamoto said this week. Yesterday, we reported on his brief comments regarding AI, and it sounds like the company won’t be pursuing it for game development anytime soon. You can check out his full remarks about that here.