Topic: Miyamoto New IP predictions

[Ceric]

Banjo Master: Tales of the South.  I will be right like Pale.

[Pale]

Dammit, you are reminding me about the avatar thing again.  I will do it now.

[couchmonkey]

Looks to me like Miyamoto's new IP is the Shigureden.

I predict his new IP will be a...gardening game?  Ha ha ha, no, I've been predicting that one for years, I guess it's not going to happen.  It will be something awesome, anyway.

He also mentioned a game where four people play with one Wiimote in the first part of that article.  Weird!

[Ian Sane]

"The user base for that title is really big and everyone’s saying it’s fun. It’s rare to have that kind of attention on a title. When I see both people who don’t play games and people who do dive into the game with such enthusiasm, I wonder if it’s going to end up as a rival to Super Mario. It shows the game’s that easy to play."

Sounds like it has non-gamers in mind which is what I expected.  I'd rather Miyamoto just make a game that kicks ass and not give a sh!t if people who don't play games like it or not.  I'll wait and see but I'm not expecting something as awesome as Pikmin was.

[couchmonkey]

We will be swept away like old relics, sitting in our easy chairs saying, "Goshdarn games these days are no fun.  I'll tell you, we knew what a good game was when I was a kid!  Everyone knows that video games attained perfection in 1995.  It's a scientific fact!"  And our kids will shake their heads when we try to get them to play Mega Man or the Ocarina of Time: "I keep dying, what's fun about that?", "So you play alone for 30 hours? What's fun about that?"

Luckily for Nintendo, Miyamoto's attitude is, "What do people find entertaining?"  Prouder developers may be swept away in the next ten years.  Personally I'm looking forward to some change in the industry, but obviously others aren't.

[BigJim]

I would like to see the resurrection of Creator, but evolve it into a series of games.

It would be an interesting social concept to be able to, for example, create or customize your own amusemart parks, a la Rollercoaster Tycoon, and be able to share them and challenge other players to achieve goals you set. It's a game in itself, but the addition of a creation/mod tool can make it viral. And apply that concept to other types of genres, if theme parks aren't your thing. The Wiimote makes it possible by being able to position rides, stands, and scenery where you want them.

Not a prediction, just a wish. See, I am open to nongames.

[Bill Aurion]

"I'd rather Miyamoto just make a game that kicks ass and not give a sh!t if people who don't play games like it or not."

Sounds more like Miyamoto is aiming for a game that is fun for EVERYONE, which is what all game developers should be aiming for...

[Ian Sane]

"And our kids will shake their heads when we try to get them to play Mega Man or the Ocarina of Time: 'I keep dying, what's fun about that?', 'So you play alone for 30 hours? What's fun about that?'"

I don't know if you're joking or what but this just depresses the hell out of me.  It's already happening regarding difficulty.  The way things are going it will become impossible to fail in a videogame.

"Sounds more like Miyamoto is aiming for a game that is fun for EVERYONE, which is what all game developers should be aiming for..."

Stuff for everyone, in that anyone can enjoy it, pretty much always sucks because it's so bland and safe that there's nothing interesting about it.  All the best stuff is more specific even if the group of people that like it is very large.  It's like those horrible action movies that try to appeal to everyone (romance tacked on to attract females; violence toned down to get a PG-13 rating) and thus lack everything that makes action movies good.  Or comedies that aren't funny because they have to dumb everything down so everyone understands the joke.  I don't want Miyamoto making the videogame equivalent of that.  Businessmen make games for everyone.  EA makes games for everyone.

"Led Zeppelin didn't make songs everybody likes.  They left that for the Bee Gees."

[Kairon]

DUDE! THE BEEGESS ROCKED!

...Oh, and Ian, Miyamoto doesn't make games that kick ass. He's a family man.

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[Smoke39]

Quote
Originally posted by: Ian Sane
I don't know if you're joking or what but this just depresses the hell out of me.  It's already happening regarding difficulty.  The way things are going it will become impossible to fail in a videogame.

I personally don't play games for a challenge, I play them to do fun stuff.  What bugs me, though, is that this is something that you can easily make work for everyone via simple difficulty settings.  Make "easy" REALLY EASY.  Make the hardest REALLY HARD.  Make enough setting in between to accomodate everyone else.  Really easy to satisfy everyone in this regard, but developers never seem to implement a wide enough range (or worse, don't even bother with difficulty settings).

Quote
Originally posted by: Ian Sane
Stuff for everyone, in that anyone can enjoy it, pretty much always sucks because it's so bland and safe that there's nothing interesting about it.  All the best stuff is more specific even if the group of people that like it is very large.  It's like those horrible action movies that try to appeal to everyone (romance tacked on to attract females; violence toned down to get a PG-13 rating) and thus lack everything that makes action movies good.  Or comedies that aren't funny because they have to dumb everything down so everyone understands the joke.  I don't want Miyamoto making the videogame equivalent of that.  Businessmen make games for everyone.  EA makes games for everyone.

I kinda agree.  Games that try to appeal to everyone might be relatively fun, but they won't be really exciting to most people.  There's a reason cult classics tend to have such enthusiastic fans.  The game's not for everyone, but for the people that it is for, it REALLY hits the spot just right.  The problem is that it can be tough to turn a really good profit with niche titles.
This is not to say that I think Miyamoto's new game will be bland.  I don't know anything about it.  I'm just saying that aiming for "offend no one" limits what you can do to really entertain any focussed target audience.

[Kairon]

Weird. Miyamoto has ALWAYS tried to make games for "everyone." He and Nintendo have been using the "age 2 to age 92" line ever since the SNES.

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[Bill Aurion]

"I kinda agree. Games that try to appeal to everyone might be relatively fun, but they won't be really exciting to most people."

That's because everyone that has tried hasn't been able to accomplish this to an extent...I'm sure Miyamoto can...  (I'm personally seeing the beginning of this arising from a game like Wii Sports...)

Anyways, it's a Miyamoto IP, it WILL end up awesome, period...

[Ian Sane]

"Weird. Miyamoto has ALWAYS tried to make games for 'everyone.'"

Only everyone who plays games.  A Link to the Past wasn't made for your grandparents or your girlfriend.

"That's because everyone that has tried hasn't been able to accomplish this to an extent...I'm sure Miyamoto can"

I'm not so confident Miyamoto can but I do think if anyone can it would be him.

[blackfootsteps]

Yeah its a Miyamoto IP, that earns bonus points before we even see anything about it. I think the complete 'unblandness' of Pikmin will allay any fears that there is any chance the new IP will be bland. Bland is not in Miyamoto's vocabulary.

BTW Ian good call regarding the exclusive Resident Evil Wii title.

[wandering]

Quote
"The user base for that title is really big and everyone’s saying it’s fun. It’s rare to have that kind of attention on a title. When I see both people who don’t play games and people who do dive into the game with such enthusiasm, I wonder if it’s going to end up as a rival to Super Mario. It shows the game’s that easy to play."

Sounds like it has non-gamers in mind which is what I expected.

Actually, he was talking about Wii Sports tennis there.

Quote
Only everyone who plays games. A Link to the Past wasn't made for your grandparents or your girlfriend.

In fact, there are relevant quotes in the interview about this. According to Miyamoto, making things simpler has always been a goal:

Quote
They don't know what button to press so they won't want to touch the thing at all. They don't want to go through a manual to understand the thing. That's basically what it's all about. When the Famicom (NES) was made, it was the very idea we kept in mind.
[...]
On the Famicom (NES), you made use of the 'A' and 'B' buttons simultaneously while on the Super Famicom (SNES), we added the extra 'Y' and 'X' buttons to try and simply the controls in games as much as possible. By trying to do so, we thought it would make games easier to play but, with the number of buttons increased I think we actually made it more complex. With the Wii motion sensor, players can now wave the remote around left and right and with so many other features added to it, we managed to simplify the number of buttons. But even now, there are people who still think it's too complex (Laughs).

Though you must always keep in mind with Miyamoto that he's a savvy marketer. Even the bit about the Wii essentially being a cube was really just the standard line about the Wii being easy to develop for because of it's similarity to the Cube.