Miyamoto: Nintendo's game ownership policy should operate "like a toy company"

While Microsoft's used game policy for Xbox One has revealed the company's desire to transition game ownership to a more licence-based approach, Nintendo's top designer Shigeru Miyamoto has said he believes that gamers should retain access "for a long time" to games they have own.

Miyamoto told Eurogamer that he thought games, like a physical toy, should remain the property of their owner.

"What's really important is viewing Nintendo almost like a toy company where we're making these things for people to play with," he said. "As a consumer you want to be able to keep those things for a long time and have those things from your youth that you can go back to and experience again.

"I really want to retain that product nature of the games that we create so that people can do that and have that experience. To me that's something that's very important about entertainment itself. So from the approach of continuing to create things that are entertaining for people, that's an important direction for me that I want to maintain."

The eShop, Nintendo's digital games store, allows for the transferral of digital content between DSi and 3DS, and between Wii and Wii U.

But Nintendo has yet integrate a comprehensive user account system for users to log in with on another console - so if you lose your 3DS, for instance, you lose all game licences associated with your account on that machine.

For more of Miyamoto's thoughts on the Wii U launch, why we didn't see a new Wii U Zelda, and his eventual retirement read the in-depth interview on our sister site GamesIndustry International.