Miyamoto "Retiring"

[Random User]

'I'm Retiring,' Nintendo's Miyamoto Tells His Staff | Game|Life | Wired.com

The creator of Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda will step down from his current position at Nintendo but remain with the company to work on smaller, more personal projects, Wired.com has learned.

In an exclusive interview with Wired.com on Wednesday, the 59-year-old head of Nintendo’s game design department said that he will move away from supervising the development of massive games like this year’s Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and Super Mario 3D Land, passing the torch to the younger designers in the company and working on projects that won’t take as long to complete.

“Inside our office, I’ve been recently declaring, ‘I’m going to retire, I’m going to retire,’” Miyamoto said through his interpreter. “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,” Miyamoto said. “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.”


Miyamoto said that he’s hoping to start work on a project in 2012, and hopefully show the game off publicly within the year.

“In other words, I’m not intending to start from things that require a five-year development time,” he said.

Miyamoto, whose creations propelled Nintendo to worldwide prominence beginning with 1981′s arcade game Donkey Kong and who is generally recognized as the world’s most influential and creative game designer, said he felt comfortable stepping away from supervising the Mario and Zelda games because his staff has done such a good job with this year’s critically acclaimed entries in both series.

“I’m saying this because I have a solid reaction from the existing teams,” he said. “I was able to nurture the developers inside Nintendo who were able to create something like this or something like that,” he said, gesturing to banners in the interview room in Nintendo’s office that showed the logos of Skyward Sword and Mario 3D Land.

The reason Miyamoto keeps telling the younger developers that he’s going to retire is to send the message that he won’t always be around for them to work with.

“The reason why I’m stressing that is that unless I say that I’m retiring, I cannot nurture the young developers,” he said. “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.”

As for himself, Miyamoto seemed eager to get to work on his new ideas with a smaller, younger staff.

“Anyway, I’m interested in doing a variety of many other things,” he said with his usual cryptic smile.

Wired.com’s full interview with Miyamoto, including his thoughts on Skyward Sword, making Mario Kart 7 with a Western development team, 3-D gaming, cell phones and more on the future of games, will be published next week.

I hope games coming out will still retain Miyamoto's creativity and attitude now that he isn't supervising the bigger projects. Though I'm curious as to what his smaller project is.

[Marilink]

Huh, interesting. So he's basically staying with the company but just taking on less responsibility?

[Sim Kid]

Originally Posted by DJ Blue J

Huh, interesting. So he's basically staying with the company but just taking on less responsibility?

Pretty much, passing the torch to the younger people. Miyamoto can't live forever, folks.

[Cosmonautical]

I'm actually excited by the idea of him working on games directly again.

[CuccoLady]

I think this is a good thing. It's weening off the next generation of supervisors and allowing him to go back to the forefront of what he loves.

Miyamoto sounds like a pretty chill dude.

[Marilink]

^Same. Last thing Miyamoto had any major influence on was Pikmin.

[Ace Mercury]

Totally makes sense. If Nintendo is really in it for the long haul, it's can't be all Miyamoto all the time. Increasingly, the game sector is being run by video game fans and I think that has a negative influence on the quality of the game. I find that I enjoy games auteured by people who were originally outside of the industry; Miyamoto is the archetypal example. He's an artist and musician (and a dog breeder? =/) and those outside forces work their way into his games.

[Chaos Deviot]

This means more Pikmin 3 as well. I'll be honest, I'm more interested in mainstream titles in general, but they're far and few lately on the Wii. Mind you, I want more Mario Karts and Mario Parties. I didn't like that they put Party on a hiatus.

[Ace Mercury]

I really don't get why Mario Party is so popular. It's a series of lacklustre minigames, and then someone random wins at the end.

[Chaos Deviot]

Originally Posted by Ace Mercury

I really don't get why Mario Party is so popular. It's a series of lacklustre minigames, and then someone random wins at the end.

It's a multiplayer game. If you're playing it single player... yeah, won't be much fun. The appeal is getting together with friends for a bunch of random mini-games. Likewise, in the older games, you could actually watch the computers play, while picking up Coins later near the end of the game.(except for Mario Party 6 where everyone's coins, including computers, are added to your total...) But that's just something I like to do.

Frankly, unless I'm eating a snack and watch, I like to kick butt with my friends in this. Honestly, allowing it to go online would make the game a lot of fun. Presuming Nintendo's online heavily improves to avoid lag. >_>

[Cosmonautical]

Miyamoto has next to nothing to do with Mario Party. The series has been 2nd party via Hudson Soft and Capcom since its beginnings.