Nintendo has “no intention” of opening more Nintendo Museum locations
· My Nintendo NewsAhead of the opening of the Nintendo Museum in Kyoto, Japan on October 2nd, gaming legend Shigeru Miyamoto sat down with press to discuss the museum and Nintendo’s vision for it.
Translated through Google Translate and obtained via GAME Watch, readers can read some of the highlights of the interview below- with one of the more interesting revealtions being that there are currently no plans of expanding the museum to other locations in Japan or overseas.
“This wasn’t created for business purposes, but for Nintendo employees to understand Nintendo, and for the general public to learn about Nintendo. So we have no intention of expanding it to other places.”
“If anything, I’m thinking about how the [Kyoto] museum will expand in the future. For example, I’ve decided to call this interview venue an ‘art gallery,’ and I plan to display Mario’s Toad drawings, terrain sketches, and illustrations from the latest games ‘Splatoon’ and ‘The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.'”
“In the future, if there are more movie titles, I would like to be able to show them somewhere. So I would like to keep up with Nintendo’s developments.”
When asked about the intent behind creating the museum, Miyamoto said this:
“It would take a long time to explain… (laughs) I think everyone knows a lot about Nintendo, so you might wonder why Nintendo created a museum, but that’s the “right answer.'”
“Nintendo has decided not to explain itself too much and to communicate with customers through its products. So when we decided to create a museum this time, I thought that if Yamauchi (third president Hiroshi Yamauchi) were here, he would say, ‘Stop doing stuff like that.'”
“First of all, various materials have been left over for several years. In particular, arcade games are meaningless if they don’t work, but it is very difficult to preserve them in a working state. Also, hundreds of games are released every year, including those from licensees, but there is no point in just leaving the packages there. There was talk that this had to be managed somehow.”
“…As a result of various discussions, we decided to leave behind all of Nintendo’s past assets and use them to let people know what Nintendo is, so that not only our employees, but three generations of parents and children can understand what Nintendo is.”
“So I don’t want Nintendo to get involved in the ‘game console war’ – the competition of ‘what to do with this high-spec hardware’ (laughs). Nintendo will continue to create things that are unique to Nintendo, and we will continue to do not only games but also videos, and we want people to know that we are a company that creates various entertainment content, so we created the museum.”
And when asked about the company image that Miyamoto would like for Nintendo to have going into the future, he replied with this:
“Right now, there is a character exhibit outside the venue, and many characters will be welcoming you at the entrance on the first floor. Originally, we hadn’t really thought about this kind of exhibit, and we were thinking of exhibiting our previous products and hardware. However, we decided that if we wanted people to understand Nintendo as a whole, it would be best to have them see our IP, so we shifted to this kind of exhibit.”
“Now we want people to know about the IP and return to Nintendo games. IP, theme parks, and movies are moving as a gateway to Nintendo games. Looking further into the future, there will be a big brand that includes the IP ‘Nintendo,’ and while there will of course be games within that, if we can gradually create more attractive things, I think we will see a lot of things other than games coming in.”
“After all, it’s IP that people remember well. When a new version of a game is released, it stops working. This is very sad, and the things we create will gradually become playable only on the virtual console, and there is a limit to how much you can play them in museums. On the other hand, there are people who continue to watch movies no matter how much time passes, so this is one of the reasons why I started making video works.”
“I think that as more content like this increases, Nintendo as a whole will become a big brand. My theme is ‘creating a reason to choose Nintendo.’ For example, if a child becomes a first grader, instead of ‘buying them a Nintendo game’ as a reward, I would say ‘buy them something from Nintendo’ other than a game. I think it would be good to live in a world like this.”