Miyamoto Sounds off on Zelda Wii U, Poor Sales, Star Fox

Authors Edit: Nintendo of Canada has corrected us (thankfully!). The interview mentioned in this article was actually conducted at E3 2014. The information was picked up by several news outlets, including the Toronto Sun where it was first seen by the author. Sorry for the mix-up, but rest assured, Nintendo will not allow us to print incorrect material without letting us know!

This past week, the Toronto Sun newspaper was able to sit down for a 45 minute with Nintendo’s own Miyamoto and Bill Trinen. Although I wasn’t expecting much from the interview – since E3 had just wrapped up, and everything should have been talked about there – I was surprised by the information that Miyamoto did share. He spoke out about the new Zelda title, poor Wii U sales, and Star Fox.

According to Miyamoto, one of the issues Zelda fans have is that it takes too long to get through the opening of a Zelda title, through the first dungeon, and past the first boss. On average, he feels it could take a gamer up to five hours to complete just that. He argued that it may push gamers away from a title such as Zelda. He also argued it is hard for players to come back to a Zelda game after days – or weeks –  of not playing. Nintendo does have a solution. Said Miyamoto, 

So what we’re looking to do this time is we’re looking to find ways to make it easier for people to start playing at any point in the game and feel comfortable stepping away from it, and they can play for whatever length of time they want… (from a story perspective) we’re trying to see how many of these unique different events or attractions we can put into the game, and then together they’ll blend to form a story.

Fans are grateful to see Star Fox back on Nintendo consoles; Nintendo has not held back Star Fox without reason, however. When asked what the catalyst for a new Star Fox was, Miyamoto said that with new hardware comes the opportunity to be innovative. One of their go-to franchises to experiment with is Star Fox. Miyamoto restated that the Star Fox team was working on something for the Wii, but it turned out to be uninteresting, eventually collapsing and disappearing. The Wii U offered the team something different again, and this time Nintendo feels they have a successful idea which we all get to play later.

Finally, Miyamoto sounded off on poor Wii U sales, although I’m personally not buying his explanation. Until Mario Kart 8, Nintendo has failed to sell games and consoles despite producing excellent, Nintendo quality titles. He told the Toronto Sun,

We’ve released some very good games but they haven’t all gotten the response we wanted them to, but now that we’ve finished with the (Wii U) system update we’re bringing some of those resources back into game development, and they’re really invigorating the teams as they’re working on experimenting with unique styles of play with the Wii U gamepad. So that’s what this E3 has been all about, is showing the fruits of those efforts.

Miyamoto essentially used the Wii U system update as an excuse for the lack of innovative titles that could potentially boost Wii U sales. If Nintendo does have a miraculous turnaround, then perhaps his statement has validity. Until then, however, I’ll continue to believe Nintendo’s problems go deeper than a lack of resources and manpower.

For more from Miyamoto’s interview – including his response to violence becoming more mainstream in Nintendo titles and the Luigi death stare – you can read what else he had to say via the Toronto Sun.