Miyamoto admits respect for Angry Birds

With close to 1 billion downloads, it's safe to say Angry Birds is a moderate success for Rovio. Now, Nintendo's star producer Shigeru Miyamoto has gone on record to say he, too, is among the game's many fans, telling Hookshot Inc. he regrets not thinking of it himself.

“There aren’t many games that I’ve played recently that have been truly convincing to me,” he admitted while catching a breather from his 3DS promotion tour at the Louvre Museum in Paris. “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. 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.”

Miyamoto further praised the game's controls, admitting that while they take a little practice, their intuitive design and precision make for a compelling experience. That said, he added Angry Birds could have been pulled off better on Nintendo's own hardware, noting, “Obviously, if the developer had created the game for Nintendo DS the controls would have been even better, but what can you do?”

Touche, Mr. Miyamoto. Perhaps we'll see a version of Angry Goombas on the Wii or Wii U eShop?