Here’s a portion of an LA Times interview with Miyamoto:
“It’s not that I don’t like serious stories or that I couldn’t make one, but currently in the video game industry you see a lot of game designers who are working really hard to make their games seem really cool,” Miyamoto said. “For a lot of us at Nintendo, it’s difficult to decide what cool is. In fact, it’s a lot easier for us to laugh at ourselves. It’s almost as if we’re performers. Our way of performing is by creating these fun, odd and goofy things.”
This is a wonderful example of why I love Nintendo so much, and so much more than any other developer. Their games are focused on fun and not on the trendy and superfluous.