It was a focus last time?
Speaking with Kotaku, Nintendo crazed creative Shigeru Miyamoto talked about multiplayer in the upcoming Wii U exclusive: Super Mario 3D World. Miyamoto had previously talked about how he was against adding online multiplayer in Pikmin 3 because reasons, and it looks like he is standing firm on that stance with his latest Mario platformer.
“While online play is certainly technically possible for us, it simply wasn’t the focus for us this time around,” Miyamoto said. “What we really wanted to do was to create something that people could experience fully while playing comfortably with others who were nearby them, and this is something we decided would be best for Pikmin and the best case for Mario here as well.”
“Now that is to say the answer to this question might change in 10 years time, if there’s a future game where for example we don’t think it’s important to be able to see the face of the person you’re playing with, then we might be able to focus more on some online function there. But for right now our focus is really on a comfortable play experience with people in the same room,” he added.
This certainly does not help the theory that Nintendo doesn’t understand the internet, as evidenced by its sub-par online system for the Nintendo Wii. With the rise of online voice chat, and some manufacturers even incorporating video chat services such as Skype, the decision to not add online multiplayer even as an option seems pretty shallow and backward.
Source: Kotaku
