I can't believe how arrogant this guy is. A "passive attitude"? Well, here's some news for you, Miyamoto-San: I AM the customer and you ARE supposed to entertain me. I can't believe people actually see this statement as a good thing but gaming message forums are so delusional I shouldn't be surprised. I wonder if someone at Apple said: "Those iPhone 4 customers are really passive and somewhat pathetic. They really need to step up their game and get some cash for an iPhone 6". But hey, it's Miyamoto! Insulting the people who pay for his games is a good thing.

"Fortunately" smartphones have taken the mass market? Really? So Nintendo lost 2/3 of its mobile audience and 4/5 of its home entertainment audience to other companies who make a better job at giving people what they want, resulting in Nintendo posting losses for years and somehow that's a *good* thing? Did I miss something? Nintendo has two possibilities right now: Cater to the mass market (which did *not* "abandon" Nintendo, this is completely delusional gaming message forum stuff - Nintendo failed to evolve and develop games people actually wanted to buy. That's the truth) and succeed or cater to those "loyal" core gamers who "failed" to buy Pikmin, 3D World, Wind Waker HD and who will "fail" to buy Bayonetta 2 and Hyrule Warriors and go bankrupt.

Many of you guys are cheering the slow death of your favorite company. Way to go people.

That's not true at all. Wii sales slowed down because Nintendo stopped to release games the mass market was interested in. Wii Music sucked and Animal Crossing Wii was a cheap game - that was Nintendo's Christmas 2008 line-up and from that point on it was all downhill. In 2009 they had some great games like Wii Sports Resort and Mario Bros. Wii (and sales went up in the latter half of that year!) but from 2010 onwards Nintendo concentrated its efforts on 3D Mario, RPG games nobody wanted to play (Xenoblade, Last Story) and the 3DS which totally abandoned the mass market and focued on (mostly 3D) hardcore games like Ocarina of Time, Kid Icarus, Fire Emblem, Paper Mario, Luigi's Mansion, etc. Yes, there was a transition period from 2008-2012 when Nintendo couldn't decide between the mass market and the "Core" market but it gradually shifted towards the latter one - which resulted in a continued sales downward spirale. Right now Nintendo is in a total slump but instead of accepting reality people point at the cheap WIi Fit U and that soulless Wii Sports remake and cry "look! the casuals left Nintendo!" No. The "Casuals" are simply more intelligent than the core gamers who will buy anything if it only is advertised correctly. The mass market is not stupid and won't buy a $300 gaming console with a monster of a controller for games they already own (Wii Sports, Wii Fit, cheap and quick 2D Mario).

Well said. I guess Nintendo's biggest problem right now is that they fail to attract either the mass market or the core market. The people who bought Wii Sports and Wii Fit don't want a gamepad and don't want Nintendo's current games. And the people who bought an N64 / Gamecube don't want Nintendo's current games either. The overall game output does not appeal to any audience right now.

Well I mean on one hand video games are an active medium. 

Imagine if you were a filmmaker and a person said to you "well, you're not allowed to have any boring parts in your movie, the moment it gets boring I'm leaving". 

That's kind of an unfair attitude for the consumer to have. I think that's what Miyamoto is referring to. 

They could make the greatest Mario or Zelda or Smash title and a lot of these people simply won't touch it because they won't challenge themselves to try anything harder than the most basic types of games. 

I think you underestimate the impact of smartphone gaming on the so-called "mass market" too ... it has devalued that style of gaming (easy to play, arcadey style gaming with stripped down play mechanics) to a $1 (or free) commodity to that audience. 

Nintendo could make many types of casual games but they wouldn't be huge hits just because people aren't willing to pay even $30 for that experience. 

Good luck getting people with smartphones to carry around a second seperate device to play games on too. Not happening. Tablets/phones have just changed the landscape. 

Bwuh oh, casual gamers don't want our low tech tablet. Hey guys we were just kidding, we're in it for the hardcore fans all along!
-Shiggy Diggymoto 2014

Hmm. A bit of input on my part: This is just Miyamoto avoiding blowing massive budgets on AAA ultra-high budget titles, where the focus is more on presentation rather than gameplay.

This is such bad attitude. They better hope QOL turns out well. Otherwise the reserves are going to dwindle fast catering to niche markets.

Also funny to see how some of the Nintendo fans are so joyous at this revelation. Industry and hardcore only love Nintendo when they are doing absolutely abysmal and on a path to self destruction.

So more Metroid please?

Nice quote mine. Let's consider the whole thing: "[Passive gamers are] the sort of people who, for example, might want to watch a movie. They might want to go to Disneyland. 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]."

I'm pretty sure a sizable portion of the core gamers are looking more for a challenge than the sort of entertainment brought on by a film. Call it a hunch but I think when Miyamoto said 'entertainment', he was referring to entertainment that does not challenge.

Not even close to what Miyamoto said. In the interview, he was quite open about how Wii and DS was trying to expand the gamer audience: "In the days of DS and Wii, Nintendo tried its best to expand the gaming population." He goes on to comment about they tried to cater to that wide audience in the past: "Fortunately, because of the spread of smart devices, people take games for granted now. It's a good thing for us, because we do not have to worry about making games something that are relevant to general people's daily lives."