While Shigeru Miyamoto announced recently during the Apple Event that Super Mario would be coming to mobile devices for the very first time with Super Mario Run, it doesn’t look the iconic game designer has any plans to bring him to the VR gaming space.
Miyamoto recently spoke with USA Today about Mario and keeping him relevant in the gaming industry, where he briefly touched on why he feels the character wouldn’t be a good fit for VR gaming. He said the following:
“I would agree that adapting Mario to new platforms is a key to keeping him relevant. But we want families to play together, and virtual reality (which requires players to be closed off from the real world) doesn’t really fit well there. We also like people playing for a long time, and it’s hard to do that in VR.”
It makes sense that Mario coming to a VR platform wouldn’t be the best fit seeing as it’s a less hardcore gaming experience and meant to be extremely accessible. However, 5 years ago we never thought we would be having a Mario game coming out on an iPhone, so maybe as the technology advances his stance may change. Nintendo has reportedly been looking into VR gaming themselves, so you never know.