Miyamoto struggles to find new idea for F-Zero, would rather develop games internally
It has been almost 10 years since the last F-Zero game and many fans, PN staff included, have been asking for another for 9.5 years out of the 10.
Miyamoto had this to say about a new F-Zero game.
“I certainly understand that people want a new F-Zero game. I think where I struggle is that I don’t really have a good idea for what’s new that we could bring to F-Zero that would really turn it into a great game again. Certainly I can see how people looking at Mario Kart 8 could see, through the anti-gravity, a connection to F-Zero. But I don’t know, at this point, what direction we could go in with a new F-Zero.”
Miyamoto had this to say about developing games internally.
“It’s tough. We come to the show and we bring a lot of great franchises and everyone says, ‘Oh, well, where’s this game that I want to play? Where’s something new?’ I only have so much capacity. [laughs] Obviously in the past we’ve tried to work with other companies, where we’ve let them develop games for us in franchises like Star Fox and F-Zero, but the more we think about it, the more we prefer to be able to create those games internally, on our own. We’ve obviously, as I mentioned, been working on what we can do to increase our internal staff in a way that will allow us to have more projects going at the same time, so we can create new games and work on additional old IP and still maintain the other primary franchises that people want to see.”
With their development teams there are a finite amount of games Nintendo can make a year. The Nintendo developing staff could be considered a little small when compared to other video game companies. Now, take a step back and think of the games Nintendo has/is developing this past year? Wasn’t/isn’t that a good amount of internal games? That is also not counting the game we have no clue about.
June 21, 2013
Three things Nintendo should do in my opinion are …
1 – Continue to expand their teams. They’ve already admitted this themselves, especially when looking at how they were caught off guard with developing games for the Wii U launch window. The 2nd half of the year is a positive move in the right direction.
2- Revive old IP’s (like F-Zero) or create some new ones. As much as I love Mario, his games have taken a slide in terms of innovation, and Nintendo is starting to ride him into the ground. How many Mario games are being released this year alone?
3 – Miyamoto says “I only have so much capacity” Continue to train and work with new people so that when you retire Nintendo can keep rolling w/o letup. And don’t hold franchises hostage as it were… if you have no ideas, why not let others try? Isn’t it better to try than simply do nothing?
Even if Nintendo is “playing it safe” with most of their games due in the 2nd half of the year, I’m very much looking forward to them (and I’ll surely be broke) Heres hoping 2014 is the year of innovation!