“Obviously, the recession is bad for everybody and it does have impact in certain areas,” Miyamoto told Mercury News, adding: “but one of the things we look at when we look at entertainment is, if you want something bad enough, you're going to save your money for it, right?”
“(We're) thinking of how a family spends their budgeted entertainment money. Rather than a dad going out and buying something that he wants, (we're) creating something that we can present to them as something the whole family will use.”
According to Miyamoto, Microsoft and Sony face a “big challenge” if they hope to secure widespread adoption of their respective motion controllers.
“One of the challenges is not just to create a natural controller, but how do you get it into the hands of the people? How do you do that cost effectively? And I think we've accomplished that,” he said.
“We have sold millions of controllers at a good price point. And we have that delivery system successfully already implemented. For other companies starting from zero and trying to figure out how to get it out there at a decent price point is a big challenge.”
Miyamoto then commented on the rising importance of digital distribution and expressed scepticism that it would replace the traditional physical media.
“Personally, I'm one of those guys who, even if I have all the songs from iTunes, I want the CD as well... I feel more reassured with that physical media,” Miyamoto explained.
“Entertainment is something that will not just become digital. If I look at Wii MotionPlus, this is something that you're not doing via digital distribution.
“The thing for us is we really don't see the future of videogames being merely confined to digital distribution or moving solely or even to a majority of our products being distributed that way.”
Nintendo recently reported a drop in profit of 60.6 per cent for the first quarter, while digital distribution platforms Steam and Direct2Drive saw downloads climb 97 per cent and 56 per cent respectively.