Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto never wanted to compete with other

Shigeru Miyamoto might be the most influential game developer of all time, but don't expect him to care about his rankings among other industry legends. Even in the '90s, Miyamoto wasn't terribly concerned about competing with other devs who were incrementally pushing existing game genres forward. His true rival?

The Rubik's Cube. Now, decades later, Nintendo has developed a reputation for consistently sidestepping whatever the rest of the industry is doing. But back in the '90s, the N64 was racing for dominance against the PS1 and Saturn, and games like the then-newly-released Super Mario 64 and then-upcoming Zelda: Ocarina of Time were driving Nintendo's end of the competition.

Key Analysis and Detailed Timeline

"Making products that surprise non-gamers, that is our big challenge," Miyamoto continued. "That said, when people point out that we do nothing but make sequels, they're entirely right. (laughs) I want to hurry up and reach a point where we can leave the franchise titles to the younger staff, while the older folks just do whatever they feel like.

(laughs)" Ultimately, that's exactly what would end up happening. The Zelda series would end up under the supervision of Eiji Aonuma, while Mario titles would increasingly be led Meanwhile, Miyamoto seemed to be more interested in oddball concepts like Pikmin and Wii Music, and even now has become more of a face for Nintendo's filmmaking aspirations than its modern video games.

Read More: Turn-Based JRPGs Make a Comeback: Industry Insights and Awards Galore

In the interview, Eno alludes to "a real danger that games were becoming too niche and catering only to maniacs." That's why he made D, an adventure game that plays like a sort of interactive horror movie – far different from the typical action games of the time. "It's not that I want people to just make standard action games or shoot-'em-ups for the N64," Miyamoto responded, "but there are very few creators who are willing to seriously tackle an N64 action game.

Broader Impact and Sector Outlook

All the veterans have migrated over to RPGs. For our part, we don't want to just cater to hardcore gamers; we want to capture new customers every single time." Weekly digests, tales from the communities you love, and more "Far more interesting than the RPGs we see today": Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto preferred casual physics sandboxes to cutting-edge graphics even in 1996.

Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years.

His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.