CVG just had the pleasure of sitting down with Mr. Miyamoto in London. Here's a short excerpt:

Q:Are you at all interested in working with the new Triforce arcade hardware and what possibilities do you feel it offers?

Miyamoto: I actually don't know to what extent I can talk about this, but just to start with a little about Triforce: Triforce is a name of the printed circuit-board for an arcade machine, a joint project between Nintendo, Namco, and our old arch enemy, Sega. We recently made the joint announcement.

Triforce is, of course, the name of an item in The Legend of Zelda. The meaning of it is three forces coming together to become a big power. But the fact that three companies have made the announcement does not mean that other companies are not going to use the system: we believe that Capcom and other companies are going to make use of Triforce.

As a matter of fact, although we have only just announced it, negotiations and development have been going on for a very long time, so that it could be completed in order for our software titles will run at the arcade centre, making use of Triforce. Sometime in March or April, a series of announcements will be made, revealing several software titles that will make use of the hardware - you will be surprised by some of the names there. And needless to say, arcade developer Sega is going to make a number of titles. As for the CPU and graphics chip in the GameCube, these are the ones actually used in the Triforce circuit board.

I think this signifies three important points: Firstly, from long experience of creating arcade games, Namco and Sega understood that the GameCube technology is good enough to make this type of game, and that it's easy and efficient enough to make their software. Of course, its low cost has been taken into consideration. Another important point is that whatever software is made for Triforce will be readily available for GameCube. Thirdly, wait for the announcement in March or April: I'm sure it will surprise you quite a lot.

Q:Most GameCube owners are looking forward to Mario Kart. How is work going and what difficulties have you had improving the formula?

Miyamoto: We've been having a series of meetings about what to do with Mario Kart on GameCube. We have almost come to a decision as to what drastic change to make to the basics of the past Mario Kart games. All I can tell you is that we are hopeful that we can show something early next year.

Q: How do you think that Hiroshi Yamauchi's [Nintendo Japan's president – Ed] retirement will affect Nintendo's future?

Miyamoto: I really don't know. For example, after his retirement, it'll matter how much influence he attempts to put on Nintendo. By now we have learnt quite a lot from him regarding the way Nintendo should be operated. So even after he retires his influence will be felt dearly by the company. Perhaps though we will be a lot freer in terms of design after he's gone. Please don't write that! [laughs]

Q: Sony has announced its plans for online gaming. When will you announce yours?

Miyamoto: This is being explored along the same lines as other connectivity issues such as between GBA and GameCube and making four-player games for GameCube. Putting a game online doesn't necessarily mean it will become any more interesting than it already is. I think there is a definite danger that combined network gaming can become a permanent escape from reality for the game developer. They become stuck with making new ideas, always thinking about making online games next time, so that the present offline games suffer. Once you have made one single online networked game you can't easily go on to the next project. You have to keep watching the game's progress; in other words you end up doing maintenance. For example, in Japan it seems as though role-playing games are selling very well but in reality it's just Final Fantasy that is selling well in the market. So even if you are talking about online networking games, if you have a monthly subscription fee you just can't tell how much software you have to create to begin with, and how many companies can get a profit.

Also, as I said before, Nintendo cannot guarantee 100 percent about the networking environment and we guess that by 2005 only around 20 percent of European households will have access to broadband. Nintendo cannot afford to program for only 20 percent of households when we have the possibility to sell to 100 percent of them with non-networked games. Also we wish to provide a wide range of people with a variety of new entertainment, from small children to very old people. With online networked games, that's just one type of person.

For the software, I have already made so many games by connecting four GBAs together or by using four controllers on the GameCube.

We could make a Pikmin online game.

We are ready to go onto the online networks, but having said that we do not believe that all future gaming shall be played online.

Go check the rest of the interview out here!