The revelation last week that Miyamoto was demoting himself to focus on smaller games was only half true. By now, most of you know the demotion part was “sarcasm lost in translation,” Nintendo says. But all indications suggest Miyamoto indeed wants to focus, if not work alongside, smaller and younger development teams within Nintendo, instead of the upper-level oversight roles he’s taken on in the last 15 years. (The lone exception, in my understanding, is Wii Sports, which Miyamoto directly made.)

The 59-year-old wonder kind told CNN the day after the PR flub that he is “tiring of shepherding each new entry into the franchises he dreamed up decades ago.” Instead, ”I would like to try to do something which might be able to expand the boundary or the definition of video games,” he said. As for the scale of his next project, ”Everything starts from something small whenever we are trying to find out something new,” he added.

That’s code for indie-game—at least it’ll start that way. Provided he comes up with an idea that warrants a lot more resources, however, you better believe Nintendo will bring out the big guns. Thanks, Brysson.

It’s fair to say that the view we are currently afforded of Nintendo’s future products is rather lopsided.

We know quite a bit about new hardware. The 3DS is already in our hands and the Wii U was unveiled months ago. We have been made aware of the consoles’ technical capabilities, know a good deal about their potential as well as their limits, and, as a result of this knowledge, we can speculate as much as we want about their future applications.

But the software picture is a little foggier. The recent 3DS press conference has finally cleared up some of the questions surrounding upcoming 3DS games, but the roster of what we can expect on the Wii U has remained, for the most part, a mystery.

All we have to go by are the tech demos Nintendo displayed at this year’s E3 and a smattering of third-party port promises and developer testimonials. The demos, dubbed “experiences” by Ninty, were no doubt designed to showcase the hardware’s potential as well as sate our collective curiosity surrounding the first reveal of what is the eighth generation of the home console wars. Some were completely floored by the presentation. Others, flatly unimpressed. Most of us, however, seem to sit somewhere in the middle- pleased, by far- but clearly wanting to know more about what we will actually be able to play when the launch date rolls around and that dual-sticked tablet is firmly in our hands.

At the moment, there is no reason to expect any new landslide of information. The console’s launch is a year away, give or take. As with any new hardware, the kinks must be worked out and the possibilities thoroughly tested. From a business standpoint, it’s in the interest of a company to generate a thick layer of mystery surrounding a new product. And, as fans of an innovative company, we’re frankly lucky to have any information at all. If it were Apple, we’d know practically nothing.

So, barring the unlikely occurrence of a careless and inebriated Nintendo employee accidentally leaving his or her prototype Wii U console at a local Kyoto sushi bar with a first version build of Super Mario Universe still in the disc drive, we can, at the moment, only imagine the awesomeness that is, no doubt, to come. (more…)

“‘It’s the universe you’ve been longing for…’ Oh, that stinks. Don’t write that down.”

- Shigeru Miyamoto

That quote provides a typically fun, good-natured moment in the Starfox-centered “Iwata Asks” feature on Nintendo’s website. It’s been available since the beginning of August, but as the release of Starfox 64 3D draws near, now’s a great time to take the trip behind the scenes. These round-table game-creator interviews provide amazing backstage glimpses of Nintendo’s creative process. If you have any interest at all in game design or the company’s history, you definitely should check the columns out. (more…)