It’s that time of year again, when Nintendo’s bosses have to field silly questions from their bosses. Or, as it’s professionally called, an investor’s meeting. We who cover games pay great attention to these, as you can sometimes get little nuggets of valuable information. Maybe a release date gets quietly stated, maybe a plan for future merchandising gets alluded to. Often, though, you just get investors asking clueless questions.
That leads to some quality entertainment, as you then get to watch the gaming bosses try and explain to the investors why their question makes no sense, but in the politest way possible. Nintendo investor meetings are particularly great for this, as you get to see Shigeru Miyamoto tell investors why Nintendo isn’t making games to compete with Fortnite or why there isn’t a free-to-play Zelda game with microtransactions.
This time, however, an investor actually asked a very knowledgable question, and the corresponding answer from Miyamoto was quite revealing.
“In the current state of Nintendo, is it possible to make these sorts of adventure genre games? I would like to know about how game development for this genre is structured, as well as communication with overseas developers.”
Again, that’s a pretty insightful question compared to most asked these meetings. The investor not only remembered an old Famicom game, but also reasonably asked about a beloved genre’s chances in modern Nintendo. Sadly for this person, Shigeru Miyamoto doesn’t believe that today’s Nintendo fans want adventure games.
“Nowadays, games are localized in over 10 languages, and adventure games’ localization costs are massive in terms of voices and text. Furthermore, younger gamers trend towards being uninterested in this genre. However, designing adventure game mechanics is fun, and are used well in Capcom’s Ace Attorney and Level-5’s Professor Layton series, so while we can still have hope for the genre, please understand that actively making one is hard in the current mainstream,” he said.
Miyamoto makes some good points, particularly those of localization costs and how Professor Layton fills a certain hole in Nintendo’s library. However, he also seems to ignore the recent renaissance of point-and-click style adventure games. There’s a reason Leisure Suit Larry got a reboot. It’s true such a game isn’t for children, but then there are a lot of adult Switch owners. Maybe, just this once, Miyamoto could stand to listen to an investor.
