Miyamoto on bringing Mario to iPhone

Nintendo's platforms were the most popular, but smartphones are now the must-have device.
Shigeru Miyamoto,a Japanese video game designer and producer. | Wikimedia commons/Vincent Diamante
Shigeru Miyamoto,a Japanese video game designer and producer. | Wikimedia commons/Vincent Diamante

When Apple stages a keynote presentation, the company's latest products are always front and centre. But at this week's reveal of the iPhone 7 and Apple Watch Series 2, the show was stolen by a stout plumber (fictional, no less) and his elegantly understated creator.

Apple's chief executive Tim Cook welcomed Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo's star video games designer, onstage to a deafening response, which grew louder on the news that a Super Mario game was on its way to the iPhone - the first time Nintendo's most famous character will feature in a smartphone game. Offstage, Nintendo's share price rose 13pc as investors rejoiced at the sign that after years, the Japanese company had embraced the smartphone world.

The game, Super Mario Run, where the player helps Mario jump over ditches, bouncing on enemies and collecting coins, arrives on the iPhone in December. So why has Nintendo taken the momentous decision that now is the time for its most valuable character to cross over from console to smartphone games?

"About two years ago we announced that we wanted to look at smart devices as a new opportunity for a much larger audience to come into contact with our characters and our intellectual property and for that to maybe become the seed that grows into their wanting to have a closer relationship to our own hardware," Mr Miyamoto said.

"The other thing that's important to us, particularly with action games like this, is we require a high level of response. The hardware has to provide a stable experience and until recently we felt that we couldn't get that. But as we saw with iPhone 7 today, the response is good enough now."

Over the years, Nintendo has made side-scrolling games where, like this one, the characters move across the screen from one side to the other, as well as games where characters run around in a 3D space. "The intent was always that side-scrolling games would be simpler and suitable for more casual gamers to enjoy. We wanted to make something even simpler, for people who have never played a Mario game."

This is important, since transferring a video game wholesale from a dedicated games console with buttons and joysticks to a flat touchscreen rarely works well. Super Mario Run, however, is perfectly suited to smartphone use: easy enough to use one-handed and fiendishly addictive after just a minute or two of play.

In a sense the championing of casual gamers has long been Mr Miyamoto's mission. The architect of many of Nintendo's most beloved characters, he pioneered the Wii console which brought motion-controls to gaming and broadened the audience considerably. But a year after the Wii came the game-changing iPhone.

Nintendo, which like Apple has strived to control both software and hardware, was hit by the shift, and sales of its latest consoles struggled. Bringing Mario to the small screen is, in some ways, an acceptance of this.

"For many years our purpose in approaching games hardware has been to expand the number of people who play video games," says Miyamoto. "The reason we did that was we were once worried that people would drift away from interactive games. We've seen that smart devices have increased their reach and we see this as an opportunity to bring our characters and games to that audience."

While a smartphone has the advantage of always being in users' pockets, there are other benefits, too, as shown by the recent success of Pokemon Go, which uses a smartphone's GPS chip and camera as central features.

"Years ago on earlier consoles we tried to incorporate features such as GPS into our systems or how to use a persistent network connection. We didn't do that then but now, with a game like Pokemon Go, you see those features really come to life, leveraging Google Maps and so on to create an experience that's unique to smartphones."

But where Nintendo decides what features its machines have, Apple controls iPhone hardware. "Obviously we're restricted by another company's hardware but that's the same with our own consoles.

"Really, when you're developing you have your own creative idea but the real challenge is to do something unique and different in the same space that other people are creating in.

"The one thing we tend to do is focus on creating something that the largest number or people can play, so we would not look at creating something that will only work on the very latest version of an iPhone, say."

For a time Super Mario Run will be exclusive to Apple's hardware. "We are planning to release it on Android phones in the future but for us iPhone and its operating system, iOS, are great to work on because it's a very stable platform. And we found Nintendo and Apple share a lot of the same philosophies with a strong focus on an accessible interface, for instance. We meshed well with Apple."

Mr Miyamoto said that, despite the latest move, smartphones were not Nintendo's only interest now.

"I love hardware platforms and Nintendo will continue to make our own hardware but what's changed is that there was a time when Nintendo's platforms were the most popular in the world and now we see smartphones are the most popular device in the world. So we'll keep looking for opportunities in smartphones and when we see them we'll design something specifically for that hardware."

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