Gaming legend Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Mario and The Legend of Zelda, has spoken up to defend remakes. A lot of people embrace and enjoy remakes, while others say developers should instead spend more time and resources on entirely new games.
Miyamoto, for his part, said remakes are good, actually, because a lot of people might have missed out on a game when it was originally released. Beyond that, commercial success of a remake can lead to additional resources that a company can use to put into new projects, Miyamoto said.
“Some people might say there are a lot of remakes, but after five years, a lot of people have outgrown games and stop playing them. Young people today don’t have the opportunity to play games from 10 years ago, so remaking them to be more playable and releasing them again is a good way to meet the demand,” he told Famitsu, as translated by Nintendo Everything. “Letting people know the original games also leads to future developments, so we’ve been actively pursuing that recently.”
Nintendo has released numerous remakes over the years, so it’s not surprising to hear Miyamoto say what he said. The next big remake from Nintendo is The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time remake, which comes to Switch 2 this year.
Remakes are popular across the entire gaming industry. The next big remake is Halo: Campaign Evolved, a remake of the 2001 game (minus competitive multiplayer), and it launches in early access on July 23.
A study from 2025 found that nearly all gamers played a remake or remaster the previous year. Another report found that, in 2025, remakes and remasters reached more than 138 million downloads.
