Our first question was, simply, where is Kid Icarus for Wii?
Miyamoto smiled. "Yeah, I'm not the producer of any Kid Icarus titles," he said coyly. "There are some people who have some different ideas, but since I'm not the producer I can't comment on anything."
When pressed onward, asking him to confirm that Kid Icarus was in development even if he isn't producing it. Miyamoto laughed and reiterated his answer. "I'm not the producer of any Kid Icarus game, so I really can't say anything. Sorry."
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When we caught up with Shigeru Miyamoto this week at E3, we asked him what he thought about Microsoft's new direction. Here's what he had to say:
I don't really use the term avatar to refer to what we've done with the Miis. We created the Miis with the idea that the people you live with in your house or family, you also live together with inside the TV, and you can use those characters interchangeably in the games you play. To see that a company like Microsoft has taken something we've done and kind of looked at it in a way and brought it out on their platform to kind of show that we've done has become the standard, I find quite flattering. But on the other hand, I think probably the basic ideas behind perhaps those two different systems are different and because of that I think they will probably develop in different ways.
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"The Zelda team in particular always works on Zelda titles. The core members of the Zelda team have for a very long time now been focused on Zelda games, and continue to focus on Zelda games, so they are hard at work and working away," Miyamoto said. "And then, of course, we have the DS Zelda team as well, so even there we're having some switching of people in and out where the DS team is mixing in with the Wii team and working on the Wii version."
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Interestingly, though, WiiSpeak will not come packaged with Animal Crossing, an oddity given that Wii Sports Resort will ship with the newly announced MotionPlus attachment. So the question is, why won't WiiSpeak be a bundle, too?
In all honesty, it's just in relation to cost," Shigeru Miyamoto explained. "I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who want to play Animal Crossing over Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. Maybe just as it is. There may be some people who want to use a USB keyboard to chat and we're fine with that. And there may be others who want to use something like WiiSpeak. So just from a cost perspective and being able to provide the game to everybody, we thought that was the best way to go."
When asked if players unconvinced of the WiiSpeak peripheral could alternatively use a third-party headset, Miyamoto suggested that Nintendo's device satisfy skeptics.
"Basically, our idea with WiiSpeak is rather than to just provide a voice-chat function, we want to really connect living rooms to each other. In that sense, the microphone in WiiSpeak is really designed to be able to clearly capture many different voices being spoken in a room at the same time and convey that over the Internet. It's a very capable microphone and it's designed with that intent. And so that's why WiiSpeak has taken on the form that it has," he said.
But what if you place WiiSpeak on your center speaker? Will it pick up lots of background noise. When asked, MIyamoto shrugged off the potential issue.
"Actually, that functionality is also very good and that's probably what's contributing to the cost of it," he noted, laughing.
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(About the lack of storage space on the Wii)
But is a solution coming? And if so, when?
"There isn't anything that we can announce today, but we have been thinking along a variety of different lines regarding this matter for some time now," Shigeru Miyamoto told IGN. "So my hope is that sometime in the not too distant future we will be able to discuss some concrete solutions."
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(About the Wii motion Plus)
"The Wii remote itself is good at detecting larger movements whereas the WIi MotionPlus is good at detecting more subtle movements. By combining the two of those, the feeling is that it just opens up the palette of what can be done in terms of motion control," said Miyamoto. "So that means that there is a lot of possibility, whether it's something like a very accurate version of Punch Out! that goes beyond what Wii Sports boxing can do, or even other ideas, I just think there are a lot of different possibilities right now. And just one point of clarification. Punch Out! is just an example. I'm not saying that we're working on that."
Asked whether or not the MotionPlus technology was open to third-party developers yet, Miyamoto said, no, not yet. "We've only just announced it today, and because of that I'm sure we'll start getting many inquires. But the libraries will be in a state that we believe we can pass off to third-parties very soon," he added.
Of course, the MotionPlus attachment will come bundled with Wii Sports Resort, shipping next week. But what does this mean for the future of the Wii remote? It looks like it'll become the standard.
"There's a lot of potential things we can look at with that," Miyamoto said of MotionPlus. "We haven't finalized anything at this point, but my general assumption is that probably having the Wii MotionPlus coupled with the Wii remote is going to become a much better standard for us to work with."
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(When asked about a new Pikmin and NSMB)
"There isn't anything that we can announce right now, but I'm sure we'll probably do something with it," Miyamoto said of a Wii Pikmin sequel. "The Pikmin team is, of course, still there and maybe we'll have something to talk about before too long." We like the sound of that.
In regard to a new New Super Mario Bros. for DS, Miyamoto tried to throw us off guard with trickery about not being able to announce unfinished projects. "That team is also working hard," he said. "The thing that's difficult is that, as you know, the way we handle our announcement is we work on product and once the product is at a state where we feel it's ready to show to people, then that's when we're willing to talk about it. Which is why it's difficult for me to talk about different projects in interviews. I have a lot of different teams and those teams are all at different points in their experiments or development, so it's typically once they've finalized something that we're able to talk about it. But for me to go into too much detail would be a little bit irresponsible in an interview. All that I can say is that that team is also working."
When we pressed him for more, Miyamoto added, "Maybe the best thing for you to understand is that all of the leaders of those teams -- of the Mario team, of the Zelda team and of the Pikmin team -- all sit within 150 feet of my desk. The Galaxy team is the only one that's farther away -- they're in Tokyo. But I do have video conferencing with them."
We stunned him with a hard-hitting follow-up: 'We don't really have a question. We just want you to make another Galaxy game.' To this, Miyamoto replied, "Leave it to me."
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Quizzed recently on the possibility of a new Earthbound game for Wii or DS, Miyamoto seemed to suggest that no such plan was yet underway.
"There really isn't anything to talk about right now so I don't know how to reply, said Miyamoto. "I am friends with Mr. Itoi [Earthbound creator] and meet with him several times a year. If we got together and decided we wanted to make something, it wouldn't take too long for him to start working on something."
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