Miyamoto: Costs and dwindling appeal make new adventure games a hard sell

“Regarding adventure games, I have also helped develop many of them beginning with Shin Onigashima, but it’s very hard to make one in the current environment.”

-Shiigeru Miyamoto weighs in on the current landscape for adventure games.

The official English translation of Nintendo’s most recent investor Q&A isn’t up quite yet, but Siliconera has translated some interesting parts of that session, including comments from longtime Nintendo developer and current creative fellow Shigeru Miyamoto on why Ninitendo isn’t exactly racing to launch adventure game after adventure game.

Specifically, Miiyamoto calls out the fact that modern games are localized in over 10 languages, and handling this for both voice and text in text-heavy adventure games can lead to massive costs. He notes that declining interest for the genre from younger players is also a factor, but he recognizes the promise of the 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.”

His comments follow a question from an investor on the topic of adventure games, something asked out of that investor’s own positive experience with the genre years and years prior, specifically Famicom Detective Club 30 years back. 

“Thank you for this question that can also be taken as encouragement. We also want to make games that we won’t be embarrassed about 10 years later,” Miyamoto offered in response. “We’re told sometimes that we only keep making sequels, but we have many brands that have continued for 30 years. We also keep working hard on releasing games in new series.”