Email: Do you think the Nintendo business side is interfering with the Nintendo creative side?

They are releasing two 2-d Marios games in one year Why do u think this is happening???? on Wii U and 3ds

Don’t you have it the other way around? It is the creative side that interferes with the business side. Shigeru Miyamoto’s job is not to make games for himself. He has to make games everyone likes.

That said, I do think the original plan was for Mario 3d Land to kill off 2d Mario forever. 2d Mario fans were all supposed to buy 3d Land. It’s not happening. The 3DS is not selling as well as it should outside Japan.

And Nintendo went into a big scare with 3DS. When that occurred a few months after launch, I suspect a new 2d Mario was demanded from the business side of Nintendo and to hurry on it. 2d Mario is still the best hardware selling software Nintendo has ever made… even better than Wii Sports.

The fact that 2d Mario on the 3DS was showed off during an investor briefing indicates the business interests are the ones demanding the game be made. Iwata was saying, “Hey, we’re making the 2d Mario, chill.”

The 2d Mario on the Wii U appears to be made primarily as a ‘quick game’ to demo the Wii U ‘game on controller’ concept.

It hurts that 2d Mario is being treated as a ‘fast food game’ by Nintendo development. 3d Mario will get delayed, 3d Mario will get its orchestras, 3d Mario will get Giant Land, 3d Mario will get an amazing E3 debut, but 2d Mario is treated like a second class game.

Iwata talked about empathy. Why can’t Nintendo empathize with us?

When you don’t respect a game, you don’t respect the gamers that play it. I don’t like ‘Just Dance’ but I respect that the game gives some people joy. When someone like Miyamoto believes 2d Mario doesn’t matter and shouldn’t be made, then he is saying people who like 2d Mario do not matter and shouldn’t bother buying the Nintendo console anymore.

And so we stopped buying Nintendo consoles.

Nintendo’s market performance has a direct correlation to 2d Mario releases. It is why the business side won’t accept not making 2d Mario anymore. In that one Iwata Asks interview, Iwata directly said to Miyamoto that “You are going to make this game.”