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Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto retiring from current position, would like to focus on small projects
Ricardo Trejo
Jonny Ive at Apple was said by Steve Jobs to answer to no one but him. As a designer, his word say was the final say. But when it comes to Nintendo, Shigeru Miyamoto is their very own Ive — being responsible for one of, if the THE most recognizable video game character of all time, Mario. Not only that, but Miyamoto-san was also instrumental in the conception of Donkey Kong and The Legend of Zelda franchises, among many others. But it would seem that the father of Nintendo has decided to stay out of the lime light, and go back to helping on smaller games rather than the bigger titles, like Mario Galaxy and such. Though he worded it differently, using the word “retire”.
In a revealing, exclusive intereview with Wired.com, Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto explains just what exactly he means by “retiring”…
“Inside our office, I’ve been recently declaring, ‘I’m going to retire, I’m going to retire. I’m not saying that I’m going to retire from game development altogether. What I mean by retiring is, retiring from my current position.
What I really want to do is be in the forefront of game development once again myself. Probably working on a smaller project with even younger developers. Or I might be interested in making something that I can make myself, by myself. Something really small.
In other words, I’m not intending to start from things that require a five-year development time.
I’m saying this because I have a solid reaction from the existing teams. I was able to nurture the developers inside Nintendo who were able to create something like this or something like that.
The reason why I’m stressing that is that unless I say that I’m retiring, I cannot nurture the young developers. After all, if I’m there in my position as it is, then there’s always kind of a relationship. And the young guys are always kind of in a situation where they have to listen to my ideas. But I need some people who are growing up much more than today.
Anyway, I’m interested in doing a variety of many other things.”
So no need for alarm, he’s not going anywhere. And thank goodness, cause without him who knows where we’d be. But then again, he’s been taking more of an advisor’s role for the past decade, which as he said, has allowed a newer generation to become inspired through his wise counsel.
No doubt we can expect great things from Miyamoto-san. While his older gaming creations speak for themselves, his recent line of work has taken a turn for the unorthodox. Essentially coming up with the ideas for Pikmin and NintenDogs based off his own hobbies of gardening and dog ownership, Miyamoto has had a different outlook on games as of late and would like to refocus his attention on games that don’t take 5 year cycles to create.
I’m sure as one gets older their goals begin to shift a bit, and this is just Miyamoto’s way of doing so.
