NES designer on Nintendo's focus on gameplay, how Nintendo is like an indie dev

Coming from a GamesIndustry interview with NES designer Masayuki Uemura...

"Nintendo was always trying to push the limitations of new types of play. That was a difference between Nintendo product lines and the others. With the maturity of the game industry...it was time to start thinking about redefining the importance of mechanics and design. So for a couple decades the game publishers and hardware manufacturers were focusing on graphics processing power and sound effects and so forth and not focusing much on innovating in game design and mechanics.

From my perspective, the game industry has always been [steered by] indies because the idea of the individual has been quite crucial in making great games. When you try to fully utilize all the computing power, and graphics processing and sound effects, then you have to add more people and more staff to create games compatible with all the technology. But the one thing you could [leverage] is the individual powerful resource. Nintendo has always been like that, we are like indies. Every time we try to create some sort of paradigm shift where all the rules change, where the status quo changes, by coming up with new ideas. Wii is a prime example of that. It became popular beyond our expectations. That was a quite symbolic product for us, we felt like indies."