Miyamoto is Stepping Down

Legendary developer Shigeru Miyamoto is stepping down from his current management position at Nintendo, but staying within the company to work on smaller, more personal projects.

“Inside our office, I’ve been recently declaring, ‘I’m going to retire, I’m going to retire,'” he told Wired.com. “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,” he continued. “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’s legendary status is well earned; there’s a scant few videogame genres he hasn’t influenced in some way during his thirty-plus years at Nintendo, but he understands his reputation can be intimidating.

“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.”

Miyamoto said he felt comfortable stepping away from the franchises that are practically synonymous with his name, Mario and Zelda, because of the great work his staff had done on The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and Super Mario 3D Land.

“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 that showed the respective games.

Miyamoto is hoping to start work on his new project in 2012, and have something to show the public before the end of the year.

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

Source: Wired