Famitsu has run an intriguing article, bringing both Masahiro Sakurai and and Dragon Quest series producer Ryutaro Ichimura together to discuss what it takes to make a successful game for all audiences.

One of the strongest traits of Sakurai’s design philosophy is a level of simplicity that opens games to many different players. Sakurai elaborates a bit on this, stating: “I could feel people drifting away from games, and it bothered me. In the midst of making Kirby, a lot of the team started wondering if we were maybe making it too simple. But I think it was necessary for us to consider people who hadn’t played a game before, and I think doing that earned us fans that wouldn’t have been around otherwise. That’s the same creative approach I take with Smash Bros. It hasn’t changed at all today.”

How does Sakurai feel about current FPS games? “I don’t think there are many games today that really attract new people. That’s why I think games need to be simplified a bit. Kid Icarus might be called a FPS or a third-person shooter, but if you took someone who didn’t know games and gave him the latest FPS and a controller with ten buttons and two analog sticks and told him to start playing, he’d never be able to. That’s why Kid Icarus is really easy to control. It gives people who gave up on the genre a chance to take a step back into that world. Even though I’m a pretty hardcore gamer, I think that’s very important.”

More on this article at 1up.com.

Numerous interviews with Masahiro Sakurai from E3 Expo are surfacing, with great interesting details about Kid Icarus and the factors which led to its development!

Featured on both Nintendo Channel and the Nintendo E3 Network site is a series of new E3 Iwata Asks video features, including Satoru Iwata and Masahiro Sakurai discussing Kid Icarus: Uprising. View the video YouTube below.

At E3 2010, Project Sora is revealed! During the Nintendo Media Briefing, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata explained that Project Sora was formed for Sakurai to helm the new Nintendo 3DS title, Kid Icarus: Uprising!! With a cheerful “Sorry to keep you waiting”, Pit appeared flying in on the debut video to the sound of explosive applause in the Nintendo E3 Media Briefing audience.

The game appears to feature a mixture of both air and ground combat. Pit is fighting on behalf of Palutena, the goddess of light, to battle the threat of a revived Medusa and her Underworld army. Palutena bestows upon Pit the miracle of flight, which can only be maintined for five minute stetches. This seems to be used for alotting time for the flight-based gameplay.

Check out the debut video!

CESA’s annual Japan Game Awards ceremony announced today that it will be adding a new division called “Game Designers Award.”, with a selection committee headed by none other than Masahiro Sakurai. This award will recognize the game that designers feel had the most impact on gaming history over the past year. Sakurai will be joined in the judging process by a panel of notable industry members including:

  Fumito Ueda (Sony Computer Entertainment)
  Keiichiro Sotoyama (Sony Computer Entertainment)
  Hideki Kamiya (Platinum Games)
  Masayoshi Kikuchi (Sega)
  Shuu Takumi (Capcom)
  Shinji Mikami (Tango)
  Jin Fujisawa (Square Enix)
  Jiro Ishii (Level-5)
  Kazutoshi Ida (Grasshopper Manufacturer)
  Hifumi Kouno (Nude Maker)

Eligible games must have been released in Japan between April 1, 2009 and March 31, 2010, and must not have the involvement of any panel members. The winner will be announced on September 16th!

The English version of Masahiro Sakurai creating a WarioWare D.I.Y. microgame is now available on the Nintendo Channel, and online! (See it at the official site for the best quality.)

Masahiro Sakurai’s microgame “Line Slash” will be downloadable starting March 29th, from which Nintendo will be rolling out “Big Name Games” every Monday through July 26th. These WarioWare D.I.Y. microgames are all created by some of the most talented and respected developers in the games industry, so it’ll be interesting to see what everyone creates!

An interview with Masahiro Sakurai in the final Famitsu issue of 2009 gives us some thought-provoking  insight on Sakurai’s development philosophies… along with some perspective on Hideki Kamiya, who recently completed the stylish action game Bayonetta.

 ”If I had to sum up my image of Kamiya in one word, it would be ’self,’” explains Sakurai. “Having this sense of self, or ego, is something I think is very important for a director to have — after all, a director’s job is to work with a team to push what he wants to do. He needs to have that drive.”

Of his own writing, Sakurai explains: “It’s funny how I look back at my [Famitsu] column and keep seeing phrases like ‘the general public’ or ‘most gamers think that…’” However, this focus on the end user is no coincidence.

“I’ll freely admit that I don’t create the sort of games I actually play. Maybe I don’t push my own interests in my games, but I do see a need to make an effort to fulfill the needs of beginners and broaden horizons. It’s not a matter of one approach being better than the other; doing it either way is fine. Some people push their own visions in other art forms, besides.”

So what is it, then, that is the driving force behind Sakurai’s creative work? “It really comes down to thinking about my customers,” Sakurai responded, “many of whom aren’t the sort of people with very strong opinions about games in general. Small children, for example, aren’t going to post a lot on Internet forums about what they’re playing. So there are a lot of these gamers whose voices you don’t necessarily hear very much. Whenever I hear something like ‘My two-year-old connects up the cables all by himself to play your game,’ that really makes me feel happy.”

Those who follow Sakurai’s work know this has been true of his approach to games for many years; it is mentioned briefly in Sakurai’s HideChan! Radio interview when asked about the contrast between the games he creates, and the ones that tend to intrigue him personally. Sakurai understands it is important to develop games for the users and not just for companies and developers. We believe this is one of the key reasons why his games have such broad appeal, and are successful.

More on this article at 1up.com.

2009 has brought us an unprecedented number of noteworthy games, as developers become comfortable on the current generation of platforms. But according to the most recent week’s issue of Japanese Famitsu magazine, the game that kept Masahiro Sakurai busy this year was none other than the 2008 hit by Bethesda Game Studios, Fallout 3.

“Technically, it came out on the 360 last year, but I’ve kept on playing it with all the DLC that’s come out. It’s a brutal environment, but I love the freedom you have in the game world. It is one of the few games I’ve really sat down and fully explored.”

A surprising choice for sure, but an excellent one regardless. It is actually a pleasure to see how even in games, works developed in a country foreign to its audience can still have such ubiquitous impact without regard to where you’re from.

As seen at 1up.com.

The Project Sora web-site has been updated with an exciting glimpse of the new office site! Rows of brand new chairs, desks, and computers furnish the future site of intriguing game development. Pictures are included of the breathtaking new building in the heart of the city, various meeting rooms, an impressive conference system for contact with Nintendo of America, a soundproof booth, and even the gaming rig set up in the studio. Wow… They have every console you could want to play! Whether it’s for reference or break time, it seems like there is lots of  fun to be had making games in this office… But please stay productive, too!

Check out the page here! – http://www.project-sora.co.jp/office/index.html

Masahiro Sakurai has created a microgame for the new Made in Ore, a WarioWare series game that specializes in user generated game content, and is currently only released in Japan. The video is entirely in Japanese without subtitles, but surely we can still enjoy watching the process.

So, does this micrograme count as the first Sora game after Super Smash Bros. Brawl?