The Nintendo Switch’s success caught everyone off guard, most of all Nintendo, who have been scrambling to produce enough units of the damn thing to be able to meet the overwhelming global demand for it worldwide since it launched back in March. Speaking to EDGE (in issue #309), Nintendo EPD’s Yoshiaki Koizumi, who was heavily involved in the creation of the Switch, revealed his thoughts on its success.
“It’s half expected and half surprising,” he said. “I always feel a certain amount of confidence in my work, and I imagine a lot of different scenarios. The one that’s come to fruition was one of the better ones I was imagining! We wanted people to have more time to play games.”
He also revealed some information about how EPD approaches the creation of a new Mario game- he is heading the development of the eagerly anticipated upcoming Super Mario Odyssey.
“Mario games begin development not with just one idea, but many,” he revealed. “You’ll have some ideas from previous projects that you weren’t able to incorporate into the final product, and maybe a few new ideas. Once you put them all together you start to see a little bit of a vision about how the game’s going to look and play as a whole.
“Once you have enough of those, you can start to prototype each of those, play them, and see which ones naturally fall out because they don’t fit, or aren’t as much fun. Before long, you have a game concept that is starting to define itself.”
Super Mario Odyssey is due out exclusively for the Nintendo Switch on October 27 this year. Hopefully, by that time, Nintendo will have sorted out the production problems and supply constraints plaguing the system at least somewhat so that the people worldwide who want to get a Switch for themselves to play its fantastic lineup are able to without issue.
