The Super Mario Bros. Movie ended up being bigger than any of the individual games. The Mario Galaxy Movie looks poised to achieve a similar level of success. What does the creator of the franchise think about the fact that movies will be the first way many people are introduced to the characters, rather than the games they originated in? It turns out that was part of Shigeru Miyamoto’s hope with Mario’s return to the big screen.
“When we’re talking about Mario as a character, he’s always evolved alongside the evolution of digital media,” Miyamoto said in a new interview with Polygon. “As we approach Mario and developing Mario games, I start to feel like there’s only so many people that we can reach through Nintendo’s systems and consoles. And so now with things like digital streaming and the expanse and the reach of what the technology allows now, I feel like that’s a great way to get Mario involved too, and really be able to evolve alongside with digital media.”
Nintendo has already revealed a live-action Zelda movie and has recently taken to posting animated shorts for Mario and Pikmin online. It’s easy to imagine the company and its iconic characters transitioning beyond their existing associations purely with gaming hardware. Last fall, I speculated that Nintendo could be exploring what a dedicated media app or streaming platform might look like as imagined by its game designers.
This shift is also happening as the console market reaches a ceiling. The total footprint devices like the Switch and PS5 can achieve appears to have maxed out. Console makers can steal share from one another but new generations of devices aren’t selling more than the prior ones. Nintendo, like a lot of game companies, has responded to this new reality by embracing transmedia projects.
“So going from being able to have a touchpoint with Nintendo only through Nintendo consoles, we want to expand,” Miyamoto told Polygon. “We’ve been able to expand it so that they can have a touchpoint with Nintendo characters through various media. In that way, instead of people thinking, ‘What kind of game is Nintendo going to come up with now?’ I would love for them to think about, ‘What kind of world Nintendo will expand on now.’”
So far those plans don’t include a Smash Bros. version of the MCU, but it is clear that Nintendo now thinks of itself much more broadly than as just a video game or toy company. Thus far, the company’s new worlds have been created first for console. It remains to be seen if the Switch 2 will see Nintendo usher in its next original franchise, or if the next great Nintendo IP appears first in another medium like streaming.
