Nintendo's Miyamoto wishes he had designed Angry Birds

Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto has created some of the most innovative and addicting game ideas in the business, but there's one he's just a little bit envious of: Angry Birds.

"There aren't many games that I've played recently that have been truly convincing to me. But that said, I have very much enjoyed Angry Birds, especially the way in which it combines traditional and new game elements in exciting ways," Miyamoto commented to Hookshot Inc.

He added, "Angry Birds is a very simple idea but it's one of those games that I immediately appreciated when I first started playing, before wishing that I had been the one to come up with the idea first. I mean, obviously I want to be the one creating the most convincing, surprising game ideas."

The legendary designer went on to note that Rovio clearly spent lots of time finely tuning the control scheme.

"In particular the control scheme is excellent. When you analyze it, the controls are actually quite fuzzy in terms of the way that it works. It takes a little while to get used to the controls, I think, but once you've mastered them, you have a lot of precision. To make it the interface and controls work that well and intuitively… well, I think a lot of work went into getting that right," he said.

Naturally, though, Miyamoto feels that a game like Angry Birds could have been even more refined on Nintendo's own hardware.

"Obviously, if the developer had created the game for Nintendo DS the controls would have been even better, but what can you do?" he remarked.

Nintendo, and traditional games companies in general, have been facing increasing pressure from the meteoric rise of smartphones and tablets, but it's nice to see Miyamoto enjoying a popular mobile game despite this.