Shigeru Miyamoto Not a Fan of Today's Games

Shigeru Miyamoto, legendary game designer (Zelda, Mario, Donkey Kong), in this CNN Money "Game Over" column, states that, "There's not a lot I want to play now," and continues, "the games out there are just too long." Thus is the thinking behind Nintendo's next console, the Revolution. Nintendo, and Miyamoto, want games that people can simply pick up and play without a huge learning curve or a large investment of time. The Revolution will be designed around the question, "what does the average family want from a console?" That very question is what made the original NES a huge success. The NES was launched as "Famicon" in Japan...Family Computer (source).

Although I agree with Miyamoto in a general sense, that games have become too long, there are definitely those games out there that are worth the time invested in them. For us gamers who play a lot of games each year, we enjoy a complicated challenge every now and again. Sure, the days of Tetris are the golden age, when you could simply pick up a Game Boy and play all day without having to understand any rules or buttons, but today's gamer is more complex than that having grown up with the games.

Nintendo will have to keep that delicate balance between bringing in new gamers and keeping the hard core gamers happy. I have confidence that they can do that.