Shigeru Miyamoto: ‘What We Create Is More Important Than the Amount Spent on Development’

During a recent Q&A with investors, Nintendo executive and storied designer Shigeru Miyamoto answered a question about the trend of rising development costs, saying that what Nintendo creates is far more important than what it spends on development.

The question related to rising development costs, asking if Nintendo’s own expenses would increase in the future and if the company could mitigate those increases. Miyamoto stepped in to respond first, saying that while cost increases are inevitable, and Nintendo is focused on creating good and unique experiences first, it’s also quite possible to make great games without spending massive piles of money.

Here’s his response, in full:

Our research and development expenses have been increasing each year. Since our scale of development has grown, a corresponding increase in costs is, in some respects, inevitable.

However, our belief is that what we create is more important than the amount spent on development. We continue refining our products until we are confident that we have created something that our consumers will be satisfied with. With that in mind, what is important is to find ideas that are worth honing, and this has not changed since the era of Nintendo Entertainment System. Everyone has different interests, so we cannot make sweeping statements about what ideas are worth pursuing. However, one thing we are sure about is that it should be something which has not existed in the past. The more you polish something that has never existed before, the more value it brings. We believe that it is important to nurture developers who take this unique concept to heart, allocate funds to development if necessary, and release games only after we are confident in the product – and repeat this process over and over again.

On the other hand, in the entertainment business it is possible to create appealing products based on intriguing ideas, without incurring significant costs. Children’s toys are a prime example of this. We believe that not all products require large costs. Even in the case of video games, with the current technology it is possible to create fun games with a small number of developers in a short period of time. We believe it is important not to lose sight of this perspective.

Fellow executives Shinya Takahashi and Ko Shiota followed up on Miyamoto’s answer. Takahashi reiterated the importance of “unique titles that are small in scale” that can be expanded, rather than spending huge amounts of money. He added that the Switch has evolved in such a way that it includes different methods to limit cost increases. And Shiota added that the company is working hard to ensure developers can work efficiently, and that “bigger budgets do not necessarily equate to better ideas.” Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa threw in at the end that investment in development is a necessity – otherwise Nintendo won’t have great hardware and software at all.

In the same Q&A, Miyamoto dismissed a question referring to him as a “genius”, saying new Nintendo employees had referred to the Mario, Zelda, and Pikmin creator as “surprisingly normal” after meeting him. Miyamoto has also recently made statements about wanting to be left out of the console wars, and said that Nintendo would rather go in a “different direction” than the rest of the industry when it comes to artificial intelligence.

All this comes ahead of Nintendo’s announcement of its Switch successor console. The company recently confirmed the Switch 2, for want of a better name, will play Switch games and Nintendo Switch Online will carry forward.

Photo by Lars Nicolaysen/picture alliance via Getty Images.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.