The upcoming iPhone platform game Super Mario Run provided one of the most surprising product announcements at last week’s Apple event – and, since then, Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto has given more of an insight into why Nintendo decided to bring its mascot to Apple hardware.
In an interview with Pocket-lint, Miyamoto endorsed the quality of that hardware, explaining that Nintendo had delayed bringing games to smartphones because “the hardware has to provide a stable experience and until recently we felt that we couldn’t get that, but the response that these systems can provide is good enough now”.
He further noted that the iPhone’s “persistent network connection” is crucial for “the Kingdom element of the game where you have your own Mushroom Kingdom and you’re bringing the Toad characters into the Kingdom and expanding and customizing it”. He cited this as an example of Nintendo leveraging a unique advantage of a smartphone over a traditional gaming console.
While Super Mario Run is set to come to Android at some point, it’ll be an iOS exclusive initially. Miyamoto remarked: “The iPhone and iOS are great to work on because it’s stable. In terms of working with Apple, we found we shared a lot of philosophies and we found from early on it was easy to work with them.”
