Nintendo Okie

There’s going to come a day when you talk about Nintendo and you won’t talk about an interview done with Shigeru Miyamoto. The creator of many of Nintendo’s most iconic characters has been talking more and more about the company’s future without him. Many reports last year wrongly talked about Miyamoto announcing his retirement. That ended up being a slight mistranslation and at Nintendo’s most recent shareholder’s meeting he talked more about what he means.

“As I am getting older, I have already started thinking of Nintendo without me in the future and I strongly feel that the company has steadily been preparing for doing business after I leave here. However, last year when I said at an interview overseas that I was doing various things in prospect of Nintendo without me, it led to a direct report on my retirement. So I am aware I have to be careful in talking about this sort of thing.”

Since that meeting he has talked about trying to get the younger developers inside the company to take on more of the leading roles in Nintendo developed games and think about things as if he wasn’t at the company anymore. He wants to do whatever he can to prepare many of his employees for the time that will inevitably come (unless he somehow figures out how to live forever).

“Even now, I am making things and interested in the creative side just as I was before.  However, with regard to the big picture of, say, a new Mario Kart or the Super Mario series, younger people are already taking the main roles and I am just thinking as one of their co-workers. One big thing I recently handled is the Audioguide Louvre, referred to earlier in this meeting. This has not made money yet, but it has the potential to be one of our core businesses in the future.”

I, personally, would love to see Miyamoto taking on a number of smaller games and using many of the ideas he’s had over the years to develop those titles. Imagine the eShop being flooded with smaller, downloadable games from the mind that brought you Mario, Pikmin and Zelda. Imagine just how successful the eShop would be with those titles and how many of those ideas could then go on to be developed into bigger games by other members of the development staff. We could, theoretically, see a day where there are a huge number of new properties coming from Miyamoto in a short period of time that would build the foundation for Nintendo going forward. That’s a really exciting prospect and something that could keep Nintendo competitive for a long time to come.

“As I would like people working on each project to be able to do that kind of thing by themselves in the future I repeatedly say to them that today might be my last day at Nintendo and work with them today at the forefront of development.”

That’s a scary thought for many Nintendo fans, but at the same time he’s also talked about how many of the younger developers are bringing fresh ideas to the older franchises and hopefully we’ll see Nintendo coming up with a lot of new stuff during the life of the 3DS and Wii U. The 3DS already has games like Pushmo and Dillon’s Rolling Western which could blossom into something bigger for them. While Mr. Miyamoto isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, Nintendo has to plan for that day and now’s the best time to do so.