Super Mario Odyssey - Koizumi on the pressure of development, Miyamoto's involvement, sequel chances

A portion of a Verge interview with Nintendo’s Yoshiaki Koizumi...

V: The 3D Super Mario series has a very strong reputation and the games don’t come out so often — there’s only one or two on every system. Since the expectation for their quality is always so high, is there any pressure when deciding on the concept for each game?

YK: I would say that rather than feeling pressure externally, the pressure we feel is the pressure we put ourselves under to make the best game possible — that's something that we always have in mind while creating the games. As an example of that, creating the game at 60 frames per second is something where we held ourselves to a very high standard with this game.

V: Can you speak about Shigeru Miyamoto’s involvement in this game? Do you have to sign off with him on things like adding a T-rex to the game, as the creator of Mario?

YK: The involvement of Mr. Miyamoto in this project is pretty similar to previous projects as well, in that we will go to him and say “this is the kind of game we want to make, this is what we're hoping to achieve,” and he will look at it and give his feedback and advice and ideas. In terms of actually how much of his advice we take on, we have a degree of flexibility and a degree of autonomy. And for Super Mario Odyssey, actually I'd say he left us to our own devices quite a lot.

V: Finally, Super Mario Odyssey is coming out pretty early in the Switch’s lifecycle. Normally there’s only one 3D Mario game per system, and Super Mario Galaxy was the only one to get a direct sequel. What are the chances of another game for the Switch — would you rather iterate on this idea, or would you want to do something completely new?

YK: I'm obviously considering lots of things for the future. In terms of Super Mario Odyssey and whether there would be a sequel, the first game hasn't even come out yet so it's very tough to say at this stage whether there would be a sequel or not. I'm first and foremost just hoping that Super Mario Odyssey is a success. And secondly, yeah, with the Nintendo Switch lifecycle again it's very early — who knows how things will turn out? As you say, in the past maybe there's been one 3D title per hardware generation on average, but I wouldn't say that that's a hard-and-fast rule that would have to be adhered to.