Warren Spector gives thoughts on Nintendo, discusses publishing Epic Mickey

The following information comes from an interview on Nintendo Life with Warren Spector from Disney Interactive Studios:

NL: Speaking of games for everyone, Nintendo comes to mind as a company that doesn't make games for kids necessarily, but for everyone. What do you think about Nintendo today, in 2015?

Spector: I'm kind of a Nintendo geek. I don't want to get myself in trouble….you know, I'm looking around the show floor here. And let's say there are 2500 games being shown. 2400 of them all look exactly alike. You can't even tell which one you're looking at, you know? And it drives me crazy.

And then you go to IndieCade, and you go to Nintendo, and all of a sudden it's like, "Oooh, games can be different. Cool!" So I think from a creative standpoint, from a design standpoint, from an IP standpoint, from a graphics standpoint, I think Nintendo rocks.

The thing is, I mean, from a hardware standpoint it's hard to say what Nintendo's future looks like, let's be honest about that. But the fact that they're finally gonna put their IP on mobile…they're fine. There are a billion smartphones on the planet. They're gonna do just fine when Mario hits that.

Yeah, can we talk a little bit about what it was like publishing through Nintendo? Because previously you didn't have too much connection with your work to Nintendo, and I feel like that changed a lot with Epic Mickey through the Wii.

I loved working with them…working with Nintendo is great. I got to spend time with Iwata-san, which was awesome. The guy who runs Nintendo! I was sitting there talking to him, thinking "This guy knows more about games than I do!" (laughter) You don't find that in a lot of game company CEO's, it just doesn't happen.

I got to meet Mr. Miyamoto twice. One time he put his hand on my shoulder and I instantly became a better designer – I heard the Zelda theme go off. (laughter)

They were way easier to work with than most publishers and even studios I've dealt with.

Click here to read the full interview!