Late To The Game

Look at how most of those headlines say that he’s retiring, THEN mention he’s making smaller games (one doesn’t even mention that). I think a valid headline would be along the lines of “Miyamoto wants to work on smaller games”. Jim Sterling even wrote “It turns out that Shigeru Miyamoto’s “retirement” yesterday was the result of a misunderstanding at Wired” in Destructoid’s followup piece discussing Nintendo’s denial. But if you go read the original article, Miyamoto directly said “I’m not saying that I’m going to retire from game development … what i really want to do is be in the forefront of game development”. Hey Jim, that’s not a misunderstanding at Wired, that’s a misunderstanding at Destructoid (& Kotaku, & Joystiq …). At least you picked a sweet photo of Shiggy.

In general, we think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. For example, if a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the U.S. release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable. Most DRM solutions diminish the value of the product by either directly restricting a customers use or by creating uncertainty.