Miyamoto on the philosophy of Switch, Iwata's input, VR, story in Zelda: BotW, 10 year goals

A portion of a TIME interview with Shigeru Miyamoto...

TIME: A question that goes back to the beginning, about Nintendo designer Gunpei Yokoi's idea of "lateral thinking with seasoned technology." What if anything about that philosophy factored into your approach to Switch?

Shigeru Miyamoto: As a company, we take in all different kinds of new technologies as they become available. The tendency for some companies is for their technical people to be more important or treasured. Companies like that tend to want to move forward and be at the top end of everything. But at Nintendo, we really place importance on finding something unique, something that only we can do.

So there's nothing specific from Mr. Yokoi that went directly into the Nintendo Switch. But as a company, Nintendo really puts the idea of fun up front, and I feel like that perspective was something Mr. Yokoi had established. Mr. Yokoi had this way of stepping back and calmly observing what's going on, too. In my younger days, we had a tendency to want to move forward so quickly, and we several times had Mr. Yokoi kind of hold us back and say, "You need to look, step back and observe everything."

And so we learned from him the importance of really putting ideas into forms of play. There's a term in Japanese that indicates someone who wants to always say the opposite, so if I say yes, someone says no. It's not like we're trying to be that, but when everybody is saying the same thing, we need to be a little bit more suspicious and have keen eyes to observe what's going on—we've been kind of trained to be that way.

It's not that Mr. Yokoi was against new pieces of technology. Sometimes, when he would get a new technology, he would just stare at it for an entire day. For example, he had this magnetic object that would float, and he would just put it on his desk and stare at it and play around with it and really observe it. In that sense, I felt like a lot of people were able to trust him, because he was really open and keen to observe things.

TIME: Is there anything in particular about Switch that reflects Satoru Iwata's involvement? [Iwata was Nintendo's president from 2002 to 2015, and passed away in July 2015.]

SM: I mentioned that Mr. Iwata, Mr. Takeda and myself provided feedback and made decisions, but ultimately Mr. Iwata was the head of development, so he put a lot of thought and time into Switch. I think that the idea of Nintendo Switch being a device you can take out and anywhere, and the idea of it being a system that really allows networking and communicating with people, I think that's something Mr. Iwata put a lot of emphasis on.

Because Mr. Iwata was tech-savvy, a lot of our discussion involved trying to figure out how to make the technical things like network capabilities or servers or whatever fun. For example, think about when we added the ability to use a browser on the DS [Nintendo's two-screen gaming handheld—the browser was added to North American systems in 2007]. As time goes on, all of these services become more and more advanced, and so we need to think about "How do we incorporate mobile devices or new browser features that come up?" That's something Mr. Iwata and I discussed a lot, really trying to decide what to do and what not to do in our hardware.

TIME: When we spoke in 2014, you said of virtual reality that you had "a little bit of uneasiness with whether or not that's the best way for people to play." Has your view on this changed since then?

SM: In terms of being together online in virtual reality, I think a lot of the problems have been solved or are starting to be solved. This is something that we're looking into, too. But when I see people play virtual reality, it makes me worry, just as for example if a parent were to see their kid playing virtual reality, it would probably make them worry. Another issue and challenge that I think everybody faces is how to create an experience that's both short enough while also fully fleshed out in virtual reality.

TIME: I've read you weren't a fan of story-heavy games early in your career. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is clearly more story-driven than the franchise's earliest installments. What are your thoughts these days on story in games?

SM: Let me start off by saying that Mr. Aonuma [Eiji Aonuma, the game's producer] and his team, instead of creating a game where you're playing the story, you yourself are embarking on an adventure, and I think they've found a unique way to strike a balance between the story and the fact that you're on an adventure. It's not that I don't like story, that I'm denying the importance of story. I think after someone has played a game, it's important that a story lingers in their mind. But what I do think is a challenge, is to cut down on playtime to set up and explain a story that's already been set.

I think what's important, especially for the Zelda series, is for the person to be able to think it through for themselves, and to really live the story. I think that's the challenge we've been working on through the many iterations of The Legend of Zelda. And so in this game, while you're playing, you start to kind of dig the narrative out and see the overarching story that lies in the background.

And so I think the story in Breath of the Wild still doesn't break the balance that's been established in previous Zelda games. But we also wanted to make a game where, after someone is done playing, their own experience in that game is what the story is, and I think we've been able to accomplish that with this title. And really in this game, everybody can take very, very different routes and approaches. How long it takes to beat the game has a huge range.

TIME: Is there anything in particular, when you think of the next 10 years, that you'd like to accomplish, in or out of gaming?

SM: As a company, we've carefully gotten ourselves involved in the mobile industry, and that's something that I was personally involved in. Then with the Nintendo Switch, the idea of having a console that's also a portable device, I think that opens up new doors to all kinds of possibilities. In the industry of fun, I think there's still a lot we can still explore. I think what I want to accomplish is kind of laying down the standards for what those possibilities are going to be over the next 10 years.