Miyamoto on Wii U’s struggles, delayed games, new titles can help situation turn around
Shigeru Miyamoto has been working very hard on Pikmin 3 in order to help boost the relatively slow sales on the Wii U, and he has a very clear idea on some of the things that went wrong so far and on how the situation might improve, as he explained in part of an interview on the Japanese website 4Gamer.
In a wide-ranging interview with Japanese publication 4Gamer, Shigeru Miyamoto discussed the Wii U’s struggles, delayed games, and more. An official English translation isn’t available, but DualShockers has translated a few bits.
First, here’s what Miyamoto said about the Wii U’s slow start:
Yeah, so things aren’t easy for Nintendo and the Wii U hasn’t been selling too well (laughs). The Wii U also has features like a web browser and two screens, and it’s very useful even for simply watching Youtube, but no one really uses it that way. That’s not helping speed up the system as well.
Miyamoto next pointed to how Nintendo wasn’t able to get certain Wii U games out – like Pikmin 3 and Wii Fit U – on time. He said:
Originally Pikmin 3 and Wii Fit U were meant to be part of the lineup that was coming out between January and March. Last year I did not mean for them to be completed around this time, but I had a lot of trouble with the shaders in HD. Now that I’ve learned how to use them, I should do better in the future.
At the same time, hardware development was delayed. Because of that delay, the whole development environment was delayed, which also impacted the production of the games. When you produce a game, the process should not be influenced this much by the hardware, but this concurrency of problems affected the games’ progress a lot.
The Wii U may have struggled initially, but Miyamoto sees things turning around. With Pikmin 3 launching in Japan and other new games on the way, he’s hoping that the console’s sales will improve:
Yeah. After this there is Lego City Undercover and The Wonderful 101. We also have Super Mario 3D World, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze and Mario Kart 8 further in the future. So please buy a Wii U soon! I’ve been waiting to see (sales) numbers catch up this summer.
