Gamertell

As part of their thousandth issue celebration, renowned Japanese videogame magazine Weekly Famitsu discussed Nintendo’s past and future with Shigeru Miyamoto.

Miyamoto discussed what he and others at Nintendo felt were the main failings of the Gamecube controller and the impetus for creating the Wii remote.

From 1up:

“We made it as a culmination of everything leading up to it, but it really underwhelmed. ‘This line of thinking doesn’t give us anything else to shoot for, does it?’ That’s how I felt. ... The GameCube controller is a product of us feeling that, without this or that, people wouldn’t be able to play the games we make. But then we realized that was a problem, that we were thinking based on that controller as the premise.”

He also reiterated two key philosophies behind the DS’ inception.

“The first was ‘something Mom won’t hate.’ It had always been that if your mom caught you playing Mario she would frown, but if she walked in while you were watching a Disney movie she’d be all smiles. Both give kids something to dream about, if you ask me. ... The other theme was ‘making it so you could bring the system to school.’ Why can’t a game system help out at school, right?” If the DS could fill the role of existing classroom materials like flash cards, maybe the world would change. “I wanted to make titles like [the Japanese/kanji dictionary released only in Japan] even if they didn’t sell. If we could succeed in getting them out there and take that next step, people might be able to take their DS’s out into public or to school.”

Miyamoto’s future plans seem to revolve around the DS and he hinted at increased online functionality, via what I can only guess are public WiFi systems.

“Once people can use it in a wide range of public places, we could probably set up servers and create a good environment that links together play at home and play on the go-then work game technology into that.” He later adds, “When you take your DS out on the town, you’ll be able to do all kinds of fun things with it in public spaces. This year we plan to challenge ourselves with that kind of system.”

Read [1UP]  Also Read [Destructoid]