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Miyamoto throwing shade at casual gamers

I

Ingueferroque

Banned
Easy_D said:
Respect for Miyamoto just shot through the roof. Good to see someone so important say it ain't worth chasing the casual crowd anymore.
Click to expand...

It's kind of a necessary thing for them to say at this point.. their best bet right now is to appeal to the core market. But that doesn't seem like their initial intent when designing the Wii-U or 3DS.

I'm excited to see where this new strategy leads them.. I just hope their next hardware revision is more Gamecube than Wii.
 
G

george_us

Member
"Their attitude is, 'okay, I am the customer. You are supposed to entertain me.' It's kind of a passive attitude they're taking, and to me it's kind of a pathetic thing. They do not know how interesting it is if you move one step further and try to challenge yourself [with more advanced games]."
Click to expand...
I...don't see how this is pathetic at all? I'm dropping $50 to $60 on your game; You're goddamn right you're supposed to entertain me.
 
W

wildfire

Banned
I wonder how much Miyamoto's definition of casual differs from my own?

I hope Iwata isn't inclined to consider such people as pathetic.


The company is better off not going after people who see little value in buying games for more than their daily lunch but

A) the company's attitude towards lowering dev costs means they won't appeal mostly to gamers who want PS4/X1

B)would be fostering a terrible attitude that can alienate people who identify themselves as casual gamers but don't fit in the specific constraints Miyamoto was talking about.
 
S

Sandfox

Member
Tobor said:
Who are they reaching out to? Kids are leaving, casuals are gone, core gamers are long gone, and core Nintendo fans will dwindle as the phone generation comes of age.

Who's left?
Click to expand...

They will obviously pick a target audience and make a push to bring new people to the device so it doesn't really matter if they're gone now.
 
S

Spieler Eins

Member
seems they weren't too happy with Wii Fit U and Sports being megabombas (which they deserved to be, such pathetic cash ins trying to reach a dead audience). too bad the realisation just came now, after the whole world has already seen it coming for years. at least there's hope their next machine might not be a failure of WiiU magnitude and actually has right priorities from the start.
 
D

Dictator93

Member
I really like his opinion on this matter. Usually I find a lot of stuff Miyamoto says to be pretty "meh," or as if he is from a different century (a previous one). This sits right with me though...
 
S

SolidSnakex

Member
These quotes are more important for their future platforms than the Wii U. Because that's a platform where they were quite clearly still trying to keep that casual base, which is why they kept the "Wii" name in the first place. The best thing that they can do with the Wii U right now is build up some good will for their next console, similarly to what Sony did with the PS3 at the end of its lifespan by pumping it full of a lot of first party content.
 
D

DXB-KNIGHT

Member
This only means that all the casual games and other stuff will be handled by the QOL team. I don't think Nintendo will leave expanding audience because there is money to be made its Miyamoto and co who will focus in hardcore games.
 
S

Sheroking

Member
darkazcura said:
??? The Wii U was marketed as a 'hardcore' system from the start.
Click to expand...

No it wasn't.

The whole philosophy behind Project Cafe, the retention of the Wii brand, a marriage of traditional controls with a touch screen tablet controller - was a way for them to merge their expanded audience with core gaming.

They wanted to appeal to everybody and found themselves struggling to appeal to anybody.
 
Majukun

Majukun

Member
darkazcura said:
??? The Wii U was marketed as a 'hardcore' system from the start.
Click to expand...

no it wasn't
there's also that interview from a developer where a nintendo guy presented the wii U to them ,ad he described it as the "small,non power consuming console that moms will love to have in their living rooms"
 
synce

synce

Member
I guess this explains why MK8 was such a bore to play. It felt like a regular racing game, but if I wanted a regular racing game I'd play GT.
 
T

TreIII

Member
I may end up picking up this issue, just so I can read this article in-depth. It sounds quite interesting.

Anyway, if Miyamoto can change his mind on this...can he change his mind about F-Zero, as well?
 
S

Starwolf_UK

Member
I take it the translator EDGE had was not one Nintendo provided to misstranslate Miyamoto to the company line as I notice these European interviews do tend to shed different light on Miyamoto more often. They also tend to be much easier to completely misinterpret which I think may be happening here to some extent.

As much as the first part might sound like an attack on hand held on rails western games (I'm thinking overly scripted shooters which give the illusion of choice, you could say play out more like rides than games) Miyamoto (and quite a bit of Nintendo) has been shown to be ignorant of western games in the past.

The second point sounds a bit more nebulous. What does relevant to everyday lives mean here and was it a dead end (people might have liked Wii Fit but have since moved onto fitness apps and Wii Fit U couldn't bring them back).

I also wonder there is a bit of "oh I give up trying to get them to complete Zelda, all I've done is make veterans hate the hand holding and the result is still hardly any players reach the end" (in the past they have said how a low percentage of Ocarina of time players even reaching adult Link was a problem).

EDGE subscribers do have the issue now and we do have an EDGE so maybe ask nicely to find out how out of context these quotes are
 
A

axisofweevils

Holy crap! Today's real megaton is that more than two people can have the same first name.
Surprised he's said that so bluntly, then again the Wii U / 3DS always were more core than their previous gen counterparts.

In other news, that guy from EDGE lied about none of the content appearing online.
 
V

Vampirolol

Member
darkside31337 said:
In an age where Apple and Android smartphones have become the leading games platforms for the casual audience, Miyamoto says Nintendo no longer needs to reach out to those customers.


If they could they still would. They were still going for that market with the Wii U and the way the were trying to sell it. They lost that market. Took them a while to realize it.
Click to expand...
They always wanted to transform casual players in core gamers. It's an utopia but it's clearly what they wanted to do.
 
E

ec0ec0

Member
InfiniteNine said:
Well if this is true maybe future Mario games will be a bit more challenging and I will keep them for longer than a few weeks!
Click to expand...

young people are still part of their "not casual" audience. I should be able to play nintendo games, but my little brother too. Its part of the value of nintendo games.

At least the first world of any mario game. Dont expect those to be challenging.
 
V

Vlade

Member
Easy_D said:
Respect for Miyamoto just shot through the roof. Good to see someone so important say it ain't worth chasing the casual crowd anymore.
Click to expand...

Yep, I assume that is a translation, so I'm not sure how harsh he was, but aside from the harshness, nails it.

That is my philosophy; this company may indeed make games I want.
 
G

gofreak

GAF's Bob Woodward
I'm presuming 'pathetic' isn't quite what he meant to say. I understand the wish that people might work harder to engage with more complicated games - even if this seems like something of a u-turn on previous philosophy from Nintendo - but the desire for easier entertainment isn't what I'd call pathetic.

I guess this is a decent sign that Miyamoto/Nintendo considers that kind of business as lost to themselves, though. Hard to go back on a comment like that.
 
M

MrBadger

Member
Well we're already seeing a resurge in difficult Nintendo games. Tropical Freeze was hardly easy, and Nintendoland, the Wii U's big launch game, had a much less casual approach than Wii Sports.

I sort of think people in this thread are getting mixed up between casual gamers and children. Kids often take games more seriously than adults because they have more free time.
 
M

majik13

Member
We will wait and see if this actually means or changes anything, or if Miyamoto is just stating his own opinions. Or just out of context mistranslated.
 
G

GSG Flash

Nobody ruins my family vacation but me...and maybe the boy!
I'm glad Miyamoto feels this way. Casual gamers can stick to mobile games, console gaming has always been for people looking for a more rich gaming experience.

Now I wanna see it in practice though. Games like MK8 still feel heavily catered to casual gamers.
 
A

akira28

Member
Easy_D said:
Respect for Miyamoto just shot through the roof. Good to see someone so important say it ain't worth chasing the casual crowd anymore.
Click to expand...

Hell yeah. I guess he must have defeated the coup attempt. So no Nintendo on iOS\mobile anytime soon.
 
N

niccoolnic

Member
what-am-i-t0ct3u.jpg
 
T

Tobor

Member
Sandfox said:
They will obviously pick a target audience and make a push to bring new people to the device so it doesn't really matter if they're gone now.
Click to expand...

Ok, but who will they target? They won't get core gamers back without massive changes to the brand and types of games they produce and they've failed at growing the kid and casual markets. So who?

I don't think they know the answer any more than you or I do.
 
K

Kai Dracon

Writing a dinosaur space opera symphony
I don't think there's anything hypocritical here. Nintendo's "blue ocean" efforts have been stereotyped by bitter gamers as Nintendo pandering to icky non-gamers with icky non-games.

But compared to a lot of fare on mobile, Nintendo's expanded audience games are masterpieces. They didn't generally make crap games; even Wii Sports is an excellent arcade sports title that can be played "hardcore". Something Nintendo has been consistent about is the idea of bridge games. People who didn't think games were for them could get into stuff like Mario Kart and keep on moving upward. Nintendo's Wii stuff was never truly about pandering only to people who would just play Angry Birds and then never touch another gamelike application again.

What is interesting though, is the usually closed-faced Miyamoto being so blunt about his dissatisfaction with their efforts. I wonder at the translation of "pathetic" but there doesn't seem to be many ways to spin this.

GSG Flash said:
I'm glad Miyamoto feels this way. Casual gamers can stick to mobile games, console gaming has always been for people looking for a more rich gaming experience.

Now I wanna see it in practice though. Games like MK8 still feel heavily catered to casual gamers.
Click to expand...

Mario Kart is pretty much the definition of an all-ages, all-demographics game. Those are the kinds of games Nintendo is great at making. A lot of people seem to confuse those for "casual" games.
 
C

Canis lupus

Member
Miyamoto mad cuz the casuals left him. Sorta tells you how much Nintendo lived in a bubble not reading market trends and the general shift of the non-gaming audience to mobiles. The switch happened long before the WIi U came out. Those people only want distraction and the Wii provided that for a couple years. Miyamoto should've realized this 3 years ago.
 
Glass Rebel

Glass Rebel

Member
I hope their next hardware line reflects that. If it's truly a unified platform as they have suggested, I don't care as much about power. However, I don't want them to drop the ball with the control options, online infrastructure and account system again.
 
T

Toki767

Member
Maybe I'm reading into that too much, but it sounds like Miyamoto would like to make his games more difficult as less casual gamers are around to want to games to be super easy in order to be entertained. Whereas the core gamers tend to like difficulty.
 
U

udivision

Member
tanooki27 said:
yeah because there are no GAF members who are hardcore nintendo fans.
Click to expand...

Yes, of course I meant literally 0 people will be interested in Nintendo games. Especially as someone who buys only Nintendo consoles and games.

Or... maybe I meant a sizable audience that can support a game console.
 
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