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"Think about it: Nintendo has been built around Shigeru Miyamoto games. Even when Yamauchi was in charge, his most significant and pivotal action was to create an environment in which Shigeru Miyamoto could create freely."
Incorrect. Nintendo didn't become "the Shiggy show" until the N64. Before that there has a much wider variety coming from Nintendo's different teams. It wasn't until Gunpei Yoki left the company that Miyamoto became the main focus. Nintendo consoles traditionally were platforms designed to create great games not just great EAD games. If Nintendo focused on just creating great games period without having Miyamoto get involved in everything they probably have a much wider appeal.
I like Miyamoto and I like EAD but I don't want EVERY game Nintendo makes to feel like a Miyamoto game. I think a lot of other people feel the same way and that's pretty much Nintendo's diversity problem in a nut shell.
That's a good correction, but the point still stands that even if Nintendo hasn't always been built around Shigeru Miyamoto's game design philosophy, it is now.
Shigeru Miyamoto has always been a major (if not the) driving force behind Nintendo, even in the NES era. And Yamauchi's heavy-handed ideals during that generation (like encouraging quality over quantity by limiting companies to only a set number of releases each year) easily became absorbed with Miyamoto's pursuit of excellence. Even Yokoi seems a distant second when counting Nintendo's marquee games. AND, with the N64's utilization of cartridges, we see that Miyamoto has really becoming an integral aspect of the company. There were many reasons for the cartridges, but surely one of them is that Mario 64 would not have been possible with 1996 CD technology. Add to this the fact that Miyamoto is even tied into hardware design with the N64 and GC controllers... and Miyamoto's modern dominance of Nintendo thinking is apparent.
Now, new voices are always a good thing.
And we can judge whether or not Miyamoto is dead weight. We can decide for ourselves whether Nintendo is held back or not, or whether pursueing market numbers and dollars is worth forfeiting support for Miyamoto's visions.
But I don't think we should criticize Nintendo for being something they aren't. They aren't Sony, they aren't a consumer electronics company, they can't win the tech-spec battle. They aren't Microsoft, they can't network as well and they can't market as savvily. They can try, but in the end they are only Nintendo, a company driven by Miyamoto's game design, a company that's being ever more marginalized because of it.
I personally expect Miyamoto to get credit for the next Nintendo controller. That's how integral he's become with Nintendo's work. I expect Nintendo to continue pursueing the hardware market for some time, because Mario 64 exemplified how Miyamoto was needed hardware & software innovation simultaneously. But I don't expect them to become the market share leader, because I don't think Miyamoto cares about marketshare as much as he does innovation or fun games.
I expect Nintendo to do exactly as they think they should, as Miyamoto thinks they should. Nothing more, nothing less. And if this means they don't take the marketshare position again... I expect that that's never been what Miyamoto's philosophy is about...
And as a Nintendo fan, I guess I can't help but respect that level of integrity.
Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com