Legendary designer Shigeru Miyamoto has been accused of dropping the ball by EA’s chief creative officer Richard Hilleman.
Speaking of Nintendo’s once innovative decision to bring touchscreen gaming to the industry, Games Industry reports that Hilleman told an audience at DICE Europe that he thanked Miyamoto for that” but added that he’s falling down on the job”.
Added Hilleman: And for the past five years that job has been taken over by a dead guy from Cupertino. We’ve asked for too much time, too much skill, and too much money, sometimes all at once.
"Customers today are generally looking for a single fabric of play. They want their game where they want it, when they want it, and at a price they can defend to other people."
The console sector as a whole can recover some of the ground lost to Apple, he argues, by playing to its strengths. EA research shows that mobile games hold the attention for 90 seconds and PC games 90 minutes. Consoles, however, can capture players for up to two hours for a time.
"Once I get your butt on a couch, I can get two hours for sure,” he added. That granularity means I cannot build the same game on every platform. I cannot build Battlefield on every platform."