Miaymoto on Mario as a mascot, Super Mario Run, Mario's future, mobile efforts, Animal Crossing & more

Coming from a Verge interview with Shigeru Miyamoto...

On Mario's role as a gaming mascot

“I feel like Mario was what introduced millions of people to video games and interactive entertainment, and I think that Mario will continue to serve that role and I think with Super Mario Run that’s exactly what’s going to happen.”

On one-button game experiments that started on Wii

“As we were doing those Wii experiments, we thought that that kind of approach would perhaps best be suited to iPhone. So that became the basis for Super Mario Run. Nintendo has been making Mario games for a long time, and the longer you continue to make a series, the more complex the gameplay becomes, and the harder it becomes for new players to be able to get into the series. We felt that by having this simple tap interaction to make Mario jump, we’d be able to make a game that the broadest audience of people could play.”

On the Pokemon GO success

“Certainly when we first embarked on our mobile strategy, a key element for us was the idea of bringing our characters and [intellectual property] to a much broader audience, but I think we were surprised by the impact that [Pokémon Go] has had in terms of bringing that audience back to our own games.”

On releasing Animal Crossing to mobile and expanding the audience for the next traditional Animal Crossing game

“We have Super Mario Run releasing now, and it’s already decided that we’ll be making a Mario game for our next system and similarly with Animal Crossing, the hope is that when we release the Animal Crossing mobile game, we’ll have more people who become familiar with the Animal Crossing world and characters, so that when we next release an Animal Crossing game we’ll have a much larger audience who will be interested.”

On what kinds of Mario games fans of Super Mario Run will want

“Super Mario Run is going to introduce millions of more people to the fun of Mario, and it’ll become the entry point for them and then the question becomes, once you’ve gone through that entry point, then what comes next? Is it a more traditional Mario experience? Is it something like the Mario Galaxy games? We’ll then have to look at what it is these new fans want from a Mario game, and we’ll continue to see Mario evolve in that way.”

On Mario's first step into mobile and the legacy of the Wii U

“I hope people will continue to recognize the areas where Nintendo has taken that first step and hopefully someday people will look back on the Wii U and think ‘Oh wow, I remember when Nintendo did that, and now look at what’s come of that.’”

Miyamoto also said that franchises like Nintendogs could potentially work better as mobile-only experiences. He went on to say that, "depending on the IP there are different opportunities."