Miyamoto ‘not actively participating’ in NX development

Nintendo development boss Shigeru Miyamoto is not leading development of the NX, it has been revealed.

I’ve pulled myself back out of some of the hardware section and I’m really focused on some of the software that I’m involved in – for example, the new Starfox game,” he told Forbes. Of course I am observing and looking at the hardware, but I am not actively participating and making decisions.”

The site added that the early reception from third party partners to the hardware following behind-closed-doors briefings at E3 earlier this month were ‘positive’.

For us, the next step is to think about what is going to be that element that is really going to catch the attention of a large number of players again and get them excited,” Shinya Takahashi of Nintendo’s Software Planning and Development Division added.

We’re constantly thinking about this idea from the perspective of the players and the needs of the players in terms of what can we can do with our ability and our technology to capture that excitement and passion.”

Miyamoto went on to reiterate the argument he made earlier this month that the surprise of the tablet PC is the chief cause of the Wii U’s failure. The machine is currently the slowest selling home console in the company’s history.

I feel like people never really understood the concept behind Wii U and what we were trying to do,” he argued. I think the assumption is we were trying to create a game machine and a tablet and really what we were trying to do was create a game system that gave you tablet-like functionality for controlling that system and give you two screens that would allow different people in the living room to play in different ways.

Unfortunately, because tablets, at the time, were adding more and more functionality and becoming more and more prominent, this system and this approach didn’t mesh well with the period in which we released it.”