When it comes to legends of the video game industry, few are as respected and revered as Shigeru Miyamoto. This is the man who made Donkey Kong, Mario, Legend of Zelda, Pikmin, and so many other franchises over his decades-long career at Nintendo. You could argue that he has done just about everything a game developer could do. But, when you look at his resume, you will see a few genres he hasn’t gone into. And for one of them, MMORPGs, he has no desire to make one, ever.
But don’t take my word for it, this comes from Shigeru Miyamoto himself, for during the 2018 Computer Entertainment Developers Conference in Yokohama, Japan he was asked to do a keynote speech. When he did, he covered a lot of things, including multiple genres of gaming, like MMORPGs, and revealed why he has no interest in the genre:
“A few years ago, when MMORPGs were coming into fashion, I didn’t want to make one,” said Miyamoto. “Since I get tired of things easily, I don’t want to keep making one game.”
He also noted that he didn’t like the billing model that the genre is infamous for. When you think about it, Nintendo honestly doesn’t have an MMORPG franchise. They’ve had games with MMO elements like Xenoblade Chronicles X, but they’ve never made their own franchise in the genre. And should they get that itch, they’ll need to do it without Shigeru Miyamoto.
