Miyamoto On Hyper Realistic Graphics

http://www.industrygamers.com/news/miyamoto-speaks-about-mario-and-hyper-realistic-graphics-on-bbc/

Shigeru Miyamoto is often regarded as one of the fathers of modern gaming, a Walt Disney figure for the industry. BBC Radio 4 introduced him as such, though added a the beginning how parents would much rather their children be reading books than playing games. With New Super Mario Bros. Wii having just released and tearing up the charts worldwide, Miyamoto was humbled that his creations have become as ubiquitous as they have.

“I could never imagine a time when Mario or Donkey Kong would be so popular around the world,” said Miyamoto via a translator. “When I created Donkey Kong, I thought I could sell a lot of arcade machines in the U.S. and around the world, and at that time even though he was a carpenter character, he didn’t have the name of Mario, but that said, I was already thinking I would like to make more use of this carpenter character and appear in as many future games as possible.”

The interview noted that Mario games have a stylized look to them, rather than a “hyper-realistic” look. When asked why that was, he turned the question around as something of a dig on the PS3 and the Xbox 360.

"Our company makes games of several different styles but we always try to be different, whether it's video game or animations there are always trends. For example, in the video games industry, it seems that the majority of companies are heading in the same direction, taking advantage of identical technologies. They are simply trying to be better than their rivals,” explained Miyamoto. "But my idea is pretty different. We try to be unique and different and try not to depend on the techniques of others. We try to be as uniquely creative as possible, and that's got to have played a part in making our games look different."

Makes sense. I wouldn't want to see a Mario-game that looked like Gears of War...

So in other words; Nintendo is a lone wolf, a very successful one at that, while the pursuit for realistic graphics is a pack thing.

I'm actually happy that Nintendo in general doesn't feel obliged to make an ultra realistic looking game. They're getting boring, in my opinion, especially when stylized games exude much more personality, identity and disregard uniformity. Maybe some day, I believe Nintendo will explore realism as an art form though.

I can't think of any specific games that Nintendo makes that would work with a realistic focus.

more proof that Nintendo is lazy.

Well realistic graphics don't work with the Mario Universe.

http://gonintendo.com/wp-content/photos/Goomba.jpg

They don't work for Kirby too

Its not really nintendo games that do this tho is it, its miyamotos games.

He talks about originality and yet, Nintendo are doing the same thing over and over for many generations running. Yes, they set themselves apart from others but do not reinvent themselves, which holds less value than one might think imo.
At this point though, they don't need to reinvent themselves, they're doing just fine!

PS: I'm talking about the games and not the console, not a lot of new, exciting IP's from Nintendo or too many vastly different takes on the old ones, after all.

Mummelmann said: He talks about originality and yet, Nintendo are doing the same thing over and over for many generations running. Yes, they set themselves apart from others but do not reinvent themselves, which holds less value than one might think imo. At this point though, they don't need to reinvent themselves, they're doing just fine! PS: I'm talking about the games and not the console, not a lot of new, exciting IP's from Nintendo or too many vastly different takes on the old ones, after all.

Even Nintendo has admitted that making a new good IP is tough. The last successful one was Pikmin, unless you want to count Wii xxx. They had Project Hammer (scrapped it due to it being boring) and Disaster which truely was a distaster in marketing. So, while they love to make their IPs last a long time, they also do try to make new ones. It just takes time to find something successful, and Nintendo doesn't like to release the ones that they think won't last.

Mummelmann said: He talks about originality and yet, Nintendo are doing the same thing over and over for many generations running. Yes, they set themselves apart from others but do not reinvent themselves, which holds less value than one might think imo. At this point though, they don't need to reinvent themselves, they're doing just fine! PS: I'm talking about the games and not the console, not a lot of new, exciting IP's from Nintendo or too many vastly different takes on the old ones, after all.

I can't tell if you're being serious or not given the texture of this generation

But you've mentioned not owning any current-gen systems, right?