Miyamoto: Super Mario Run dev team, iOS temp. exclusivity, 4 mobile games before April

Following yesterday’s announcement, TIME had the opportunity to interview Shigeru Miyamoto about Super Mario Run. The famous creator confirmed that he was indeed working on the game, but also that the team working on the game “mostly comprised of the original Super Mario development team”.

He reveals that Takashi Tezuka is also working on the game, but doesn’t specify his role (he’s most likely Director, or at the very least supervisor):

The team that’s developing Super Mario Run is actually mostly comprised of the original Super Mario development team. So [Takashi] Tezuka-san is the developer and I’m the producer. We’ve brought together the developers at Nintendo who know the side-scrolling Mario games best, to work with them to develop the best side-scrolling Mario game for a mobile device.

Also, Shigeru Miyamoto explains why the game is coming to iOS first. Basically, it all comes down to hardware: when developing a game or app for that platform, you don’t have too much do to when it comes to compatibility. It’s the total opposite on Android, which is installed on an infinitely broader range of devices, by many different companies. Basically: it’s much more simple to develop for iOS.

Here’s what he said about that:

Of course there are other mobile devices we’ll be bringing the game to later. But with the Apple devices, their hardware design is such that there’s not much you have to do from a compatibility standpoint across multiple different devices. It’s very streamlined. And I think just from a philosophical standpoint, there are elements of their design that are similar to ours. So that’s why we’re bringing it to iPhone first.

Super Mario Run will come to Android devices later down the line, but we don’t know when exactly.

Super Mario Run is one of the 5 games Nintendo is planning to release before April 2017. Well… “planned” is more accurate in that case, as Shigeru Miyamoto has confirmed what many people suspected following the delay of the Fire Emblem and Animal Crossing games: the 5th mobile game will not be released before April 2017.

Here’s what Shigeru Miyamoto said about this:

We’ve consistently stated a plan to launch approximately five mobile apps by the end of this fiscal year, including Miitomo. Given market conditions and the development process for each title, our current plan is to launch four total mobile titles in that period

Super Mario Run (iOS) comes out in December. The Android version will follow later.

Source: TIME