Nintendo mastermind Shigeru Miyamoto has gone on record to tell Wired News that the motivating factor behind the quality control in their games is to avoid the styles of other developers. Namely SEGA’s. Quoth:
I’m always instructing my game designers on the history of the characters and worlds we’ve created. Often we’re in development and I’ll say, ‘Oh, this looks like a Sega game. We need to make it look more like Mario.’
It’s a double edged sword really, I guess he has a point. On the one hand, SEGA have been doing nothing but running their old franchises into the ground lately. On another, it’s good that Nintendo distance their style so much so that no-one else’s name is tied in with Nintendogs or Wii Fit or whatever waggle fad is cool these days. And on a third hand I just created out of plasticine and sticky tape, Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games felt MUCH more like a Nintendo game than a SEGA one, and that ended up stealing Nintendo’s own lunch money.
Of course, there’s a 100.1% chance he’s using SEGA as a mere example of avoiding another company’s style and not running the boys in blue into the ground, but of course we’ll wait for the million and one fanboys to start cursing Ninty’s name in the street bearing torches. Give it ten minutes.
15th Anniversary: Revenge of the Wii (Wired, via Kotaku)