Miyamoto Interview Mentions Project Café Rumors (Update!)

Shigeru Miyamoto recently sat down with French gaming site Gameblog to discuss the 3DS, but he also got in a few words about Project Café. His response was characteristically vague, with mentions that as a hardware developer they’re always thinking about new hardware, but he also let slip that the rumors might not be so unfounded after all: “I admit that there’s no smoke without fire.” Of course, he also warned not to believe everything that appears on the Internet, and that Nintendo will reveal the new hardware when they’re ready.

So it sounds like new hardware is probably coming up in the remotely near future, but we’re still not any closer to knowing anything about the details with any complete certainty. Not much else to say here, but I’ll try to unpack the rest of the interview just in case anyone’s curious:

• 3DS features like StreetPass, 3D photos make it a social exchange “toy”
• Miyamoto is personally working on Zelda, Mario, Mario Kart 3DS, and Pikmin
• Several new AR titles are on the way
• Miyamoto didn’t originally think about 3D when designing the Mario character, which made modeling him in 3D difficult
• Miyamoto knows lots of people hate Toon Link
• “Many products” will be launched to celebrate Zelda‘s 25th anniversary – more than just games, perhaps?
• This is, of course, the interview that mentions he’d like for Mario 3DS to come this year
• Specifically says that Mario might fly using the Tanuki Suit

Again, nothing positively groundbreaking here, but it does give us some perspective as far as what to expect for 2011 – at least, I’d imagine when Miyamoto mentioned his four projects he probably wasn’t looking much further than this year. And that should be reassuring to anyone wondering how long it will be ‘til Skyward Sword hits.

Update: Miyamoto also mentioned another interesting detail that I missed, but that I feel needs a bit of attention given to it. Apparently he wants to start working on new projects, but feels his obligation to his own franchises such as Mario or Zelda is taking away from that. He wants to hand these series over to other, younger teams – we can perhaps see his transfer of Mario to EAD Tokyo as a sort of starting point. Do you think Miyamoto being more hands-off with Mario and Zelda will prove to be a good thing for those series? Personally, after seeing EAD Tokyo’s work with Mario and the way the Spirit Tracks team managed to turn DS Zelda around, I think this is a generally good move that Nintendo is ready to make. Besides, shouldn’t Miyamoto be retiring soon?

Source: Gameblog, update thanks to GoNintendo