Since Minecraft was released officially 2 years ago, it has been steadily conquering more and more platforms. It is on PC, iPhone, Xbox, PS3 and PS4, and more. However, the one unconquered territory for Minecraft is Nintendo consoles. While it seems like a no brainer that the family friendly WiiU or 3DS consoles would be a perfect fit for the game, neither Mojang nor Nintendo has approached the other about putting the game on their system.
Recently Stephen Totilo at Kotaku spoke to Shigeru Miyamoto about the game, and how it could be a perfect fit for the system. In his article, you get the sense that Miyamoto doesn’t seem to understand the massive appeal that Minecraft has, especially for younger gamers. Possibly this is due to the fact that Minecraft is simply not as successful in Japan.
Miyamoto did mention that he can appreciate the creative genre that Minecraft belongs to, and that he hopes that Mario Maker can capture a similar audience. However, Mario Maker (while fun) doesn’t seem to hold the same open world adventure feel that captivates Minecraft players. Shinya Takahashi, who was also present at the interview, spoke more about Minecraft.
“What’s interesting is that, in Japan, Minecraft is not popular in the way it is in the U.S. and Europe, so we’ve also thought that, if we were able to do a partnership like that, it might bring opportunity to help make Minecraft more popular in Japan.”
It seems like a perfectly natural fit for the system, and yet the Nintendo team seems like they simply aren’t familiar with the pull that the game has on western audiences. While there are still no plans to bring the smash indie game to Nintendo consoles, Miyamoto did tease that perhaps they were already in talks with Mojang to bring the game over. I’ll have to see it to believe it.
