"One does not start by asking what is popular now" - Miyamoto takes a jab at the industry in Famitsu

In an interview with Famitsu (July 2026), Shigeru Miyamoto explains why Nintendo keeps its global readers while its competitors are running out of steam. His answer comes down to one sentence - and it directly targets the live-service strategy that has weighed down Sony over the past three years.

The context

Kotaku relayed on July 28, 2026, an excerpt from an interview granted by Shigeru Miyamoto to the Japanese magazine Famitsu (July 2026 edition, via machine translation then US pickup). Miyamoto answers a simple question: why does Nintendo continue to appeal globally when the big competitors are struggling?

His answer is in two sentences that must be read together:

« The reason why Nintendo is particularly supported globally is that we don't start by asking "what's popular now?" »

« If you only think about whether something will make money quickly when you create it, you can't create anything unique or with potential. »

Free translation: « What makes our global support is that we don't first ask what is popular now. If you only think about making money quickly, you will never create anything unique or promising. »

Our reading

We heard this sentence and let's be honest: it stings, and it's addressed. Miyamoto doesn't mention anyone, but the 2022-2026 context makes the target obvious. Sony announced in 2022, under the impetus of Jim Ryan, the public objective of releasing 10 live-service games by the end of fiscal year 2026 - the May 2022 investor presentation made it the backbone of the PlayStation strategy. The result is documented: Concord closed after two weeks in September 2024 (Bloomberg), with an estimated cost of more than 200 million dollars (Push Square) or even up to 400 million according to other estimates (Forbes); several canceled projects; the acquisition of Bungie ($3.6 billion announced on January 31, 2022 by CNBC / Sony) which did not produce Marathon on time and cost waves of layoffs. During the same period, Nintendo delivered Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Metroid Prime 4 and the Switch 2, all without microtransactions.

What Miyamoto points out is not the live-service trend itself - it's the substitution of the question "do we like playing this?" with the question "does it make money quickly?". Nintendo has not missed this shift: the company even extended Splatoon 3 with a real solo DLC (Side Order) rather than piling up paid events. The studio also defends a line where hardware specs come after gameplay - the Switch 2 is the manifesto.

The honest counterpoint

Nintendo is not exempt: Nintendo Switch Sports, the Splatfest events, Mario Kart Tour mobile have indeed flirted with the service logic. And a good part of Kyoto's financial comfort comes from the strong exclusivity of its IPs and the closed ecosystem of the Switch - a luxury that Sony and Microsoft, positioned multi-platform, do not have. The Miyamoto lesson is not directly transferable.

But it reminds of an obvious fact that has been lost among Western AAA studios: a game must first be a game. The indies (Balatro, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Silksong) have demonstrated this again this year.

Key takeaways

• Note (for the sentence, not for a game): 9/10 - it's the kind of sentence that will be quoted for three years in GDC postmortems.
• One-liner: Miyamoto reminds us not to confuse "retention metric" and "reason for a game to exist."
• For whom: everyone who decides what to fund in gaming - and everyone who wonders why the AAA scene seems flat to them for the past two years.

Competitors to situate: Sony (strategy 10 GaaS 2022-2026, cf. Concord, Bungie), Microsoft (Activision acquisition $68.7 billion finalized on October 13, 2023 after 21 months of regulatory blocking, cf. TechCrunch - Game Pass opening which raises its own questions).