Nintendo debunks Miyamoto partial retirement claim

Nintendo has denied its legendary designer Shigeru Miyamoto is to step down from his current role inside the company and take partial retirement.

Miyamoto said in an interview with Wired he was stepping aside to make smaller projects.

“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,” Miyamoto said.

“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.”

Nintendo’s flat out denied that this is the case, however.

“This is absolutely not true,” it said in a statement to Reuters. “Please do not be concerned.”

Since the news broke, shares in Nintendo have fallen by 2%.

Miyamoto seemed deadly serious about this decision in the interview, declaring he intends to begin one of these small projects in 2012, and have something to show before year’s end.

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

The designer feels he can safely step down from his current role, because the teams under his guidance have proved capable of producing quality games, namely The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and Super Mario 3D Land – but that Nintendo’s younger staff need to learn to do it without him.

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

“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.”

Miyamoto’s list of credits is a who’s-who list of Nintendo’s franchises; Mario, Donkey Kong, Pikmin, Nintendogs, The Legend of Zelda, Starfox, and more.

Thanks, Joystiq.

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[Original story by Brenna Hillier, contributions by Johnny Cullen]

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7 comments

SOMI
08/12/11, 3:08 am

I hope he retires for good soon, so we can all breath a sign of relief.

Sini
08/12/11, 4:54 am

meh, it’s not as much him as nintendo itself, they haven’t made an original core ip game since pikmin, which released like over 10 years ago..

Patrick Garratt
08/12/11, 5:06 am

Blimey.

G1GAHURTZ
08/12/11, 6:38 am

Nintendo peaked at OoT.

It’s been downhill ever since.

MutamixBubblypots
08/12/11, 8:25 am

So? If their other IPs are selling well and are made well, then there isn’t any reason to make new ones.

>_> I’m sure you meant uphill.

Joe Musashi
08/12/11, 8:47 am

One day, Miyamoto will shuffle off his mortal coil. Nintendo will debunk that too. Heck, they’ve probably got plans to put the poor guy in cryogenic freeze already.

Come to think of it, that’s probably already the case. They just defrost him to parade him at E3 shows like some puppet.

ManuOtaku
08/12/11, 11:35 am

I hope this is not true at all, but if he was serious maybe this is happening sooner than later, well i just hope the newer members had learned all they could from him and i hope he did see an stroke of genius on a bunch of them, in order to take this decision, i just hope he keeps involve in some way because he has an straight idea of what is needed to make a great game.