I've noticed something: Miyamoto keeps setting trends with games that insiders to the industry call "crap", "non-games", and other such harsh terms at the time of their release. And yes, that includes SMB and Zelda; they were both criticized by PC gamers of their time for being so simplistic and childish. They scoffed at the lack of surface-level depth, and didn't bother to check and see if there was any hidden depth (which there was, of course).

Yet his revolutionary "non-game" games he makes end up being the highest sellers of all time and spawning entire series (both Nintendo-made and competitor-made). Every one of these are not really "games" by the standards of the time; they're "software toys".

The inevitable conclusion would be that "software toys" will sell better than "games", yet few developers ever think to make "software toys", and most fail to get even close to the kind of response from their "software toys" as Miyamoto gets from his. That, I believe, is because they miss the nature of good "software toys": their complexity is hidden, and on the surface level, they're extremely simple.

Of all the developers in the world, I have seen only one other who has had a similar impact on a consistent basis: Will Wright. Funnily enough, I think he was the one who coined the term "software toy" to describe games that don't fit the standards of the term "game" at the time of their release.

Freudian slip?

I now have an idea for a Wii game..

But I would like to spend the rest of my time today on what is perhaps the next logical question: where does Nintendo go from here? Let me try to explain it first with an image. In the universe of interactive entertainment, there is a planet we call videogames. It is the one we know best. But it is only one. Also in our inverse are other planets which entertain, but in different ways from current games. It is this part of the universe that we are anxious to explore.

This idea creates the dual passions of Nintendo. On one hand, we work every day to make what we describe as videogames better. We want to give players what they want. But at the same time, we are intent on finding out what else we can use to entertain. Our second goal is to show players something new, something they may not even know they want. You already are familiar with a good example of this philosophy. It's called Pokemon. At its core, Pokemon is a wonderful role-playing game. But it's also much more. Players will collect and trade Pokemon, maybe the same way you once collected and traded bottle caps or baseball cards. Pokemon expanded RPGs to places they hadn't gone before.

Iwata, 2005 ( Heart of a gamer )

Read my sign for the rest ...

Deja vu

I obviously meant to type Will Wright. My fingers love to make curious typos, and I don't always catch what they've actually spelled. Leads to some interesting situations, perhaps the most notorious being where I typed "Road Island" instead of "Rhode Island"...

Long read and i agree.

Actually Mario Paint, despite the name, ended up being a bigger hit with people who like to make music.

As I said in another post, it was all about timing. Mario Paint was before the explosive success of the PlayStation era imposed a stereotypical image of what games and gamers are supposed to be on the mainstream public.

Personally I liked playing with the animation program more on Mario Paint then the composer, all though I did use it to make Music to go with my simple crummy little movies. I also use to own this simple Simpsons CD-Rom game that was basically a simple animation program. You had characters and some pre-programmed animations, as well as backgrounds and sound effects and quips of dialogue to make your own simple Simpsons shorts. Today I'm trying to use final cut pro to edit together a 15-20 min short horror movie produced by friends and family.

When I was a kid, there seemed to be a pretty healthy market for specifically educational software/games. Humongous Entertainment made several simple colorful point and click adventures for kids to give them a basic hold on problem solving, and the backyard sports series to get a basic feel of different sports. MECC made the Oregon Trail and it's follow-ups to teach people history and geography as well as gaining basic experience in resource and time management. Music Pen worked with Microsoft and Scholastic Press to produce a series of games based on the Magic School Bus books to better teach a variety of basic Sciences through games. Broderbund Software tried to get kids interested in Almanacs with the Carmen Sandagio series.

Why is it there was enough room in this industry for countless fantasy themed RPG's and war shooters, but not for these games?

Well, there you go.  Point, counter-point.