A portion of a Gamasutra interview with director of digital contents Yasuhiro Wada...

GS: What is your impression of the state of third parties on the Nintendo platforms right now, market-wise? Because Marvelous is putting out some good games, but as you said, they don't always achieve the sales results.

YW: Difficult question. The Nintendo market is pretty humongous right now but I think that's primarily because of all the light users, the casual users. The core userbase for the Wii is really still small. One of the things that Nintendo is trying to do, like with the Motion Plus, is try to make it more advanced and more friendly to the gamer-gamer.

But it's still not enough because Sony and Microsoft are starting to do the same sorts of technology. In those cases they are still weak, but I think it's really important to have more core titles such as Zelda and other titles from Nintendo to grow that core market area, so the whole market can grow as well.

GS: It seems like that is really not Nintendo's focus, growing the core market, generally leaving that task to third parties like Marvelous. To adapt to the actual market, do you feel that Marvelous may have to move away from traditional games and start doing things more like the yoga, fitness, or training kind stuff? Well, I think the training trend is over, but now it's motion and fitness and things.

YW: It’s not like we really are in love with Nintendo, we’re in love with making good games. Some of those just happened to appear on all those Nintendo platforms. We're in love with all the other platforms as well, so we orient any game to whichever platform.

A lot of different companies are going to HD-heavy platforms, meaning their technology isn't really so advanced that they can really utilize it. And because of that the idea part doesn't have to be that solid but the technology is enough for people to play.

I don't think that Marvelous is at that level of technology yet, so that's why we have to really fight with our ideas game planning and game design. At a certain point we will reach that place and we can advance to multiple platforms and different other venues.

GS: When do you think, and through what methodology, will you get to that technological level? What path will you take to try to get there?

YW: I think two or three years ago we were concentrating on the DS and PSP platforms. The only way to advance is to gain experience, so just by creating more games and learning what to do on new platforms.

Right now as a company we are concentrating on the Wii but at a certain point we'll reach the point that we can say, “Okay, I think we maxed out what we can do for Wii”, and at that point we can utilize that skill and knowledge for the PS3 and Xbox 360.

Full interview here