Nintendo may finally be branching out into new formats for their games – they’ve finally started exploring smartphone games, to great success – but they’re not just going to jump on every trend and fad in the market, and put their games on each emerging technology wantonly. Speaking to USA Today, Nintendo’s legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto said that Mario, which will be coming to iPhones in Super Mario Run this holiday season, will not be coming to VR, for instance.
“I would agree that adapting Mario to new platforms is a key to keeping him relevant,” he said. “But we want families to play together, and virtual reality (which requires players to be closed off from the real world) doesn’t really fit well there. We also like people playing for a long time, and it’s hard to do that in VR.”
I think I can understand what he is saying- Mario games are fundamentally designed to be appealing to as many people as possible, and to be social experiences. A VR game would be neither- so Nintendo’s reluctance in making a Mario VR game makes sense. That said, given that Nintendo has admitted that it is exploring VR tech, maybe one day, eventually, we will get to stomp around in the Mushroom Kingdom in full VR.
