Miyamoto: The Wii U GamePad Gives Us Advantages over Tablets, Smartphones

Forget Nintendo’s lackluster January console sales, forget worries about dwindling interest in game consoles in general — Shigeru Miyamoto clearly believes in the Wii U, and he’s thinking well beyond its appeal to traditional gamers. The man whose iconic video game franchises — Mario, Donkey Kong, Zelda, Pikmin and more – have for decades inspired the games industry views the Wii U’s sui generis GamePad as the Wii U’s saving grace, arguing that its synchronous streaming technology should insulate it from the tablet/smartphone threat while fundamentally reconceptualizing the decades-old viewing/playing dynamic in living rooms.
I spoke with Miyamoto by phone earlier this week in a broad-ranging interview about the Wii U as well as his approach to game design — here’s part one.


1. What part of the Wii U’s hardware do you find the most inspiring and why?

2. Let’s talk about the Wii U system updates. The Wii U launched with interface issues and missing applications, including slow load times for native apps. Why weren’t the slow load times caught before release, and why is the update to improve system performance taking until spring?

3. Do you anticipate a significant performance upgrade to the Wii U interface itself?

4. How worried are you about the elephants already sharing the room with the Wii U, meaning tablets, smartphones and other mobile devices along with set-top boxes from players like Roku and Apple?

***The answers are here: http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=156677&page=1

Good stuff

I have faith in Nintendo.

Thumbs up!!!