Reuters

Nintendo Co Ltd on Thursday denied a report that Shigeru Miyamoto, widely seen as the world's most influential games designer, would step down from his current position and take a smaller role in the company.

Wired magazine had quoted the 59-year-old creator of popular games franchises including Super Mario Bros and The Legend of Zelda as saying in an interview that he wanted to retire and work on smaller projects, passing the torch to younger designers.

"This is absolutely not true," said a spokeswoman for Nintendo. "There seems to have been a misunderstanding. He has said all along that he wants to train the younger generation.

"He has no intention of stepping down. Please do not be concerned."

Shares in Nintendo fell 2 percent to 11,040 yen on Thursday, compared with a 0.7 percent drop in the Nikkei average.

Miyamoto's influence over Nintendo has been such that analysts often ask about his latest hobbies to try to glean ideas about what games he might work on next.

Any sign that the company might lose Miyamoto would be a fresh blow for Nintendo, which dominated the games industry for years with its Wii consoles and DS handheld devices, but has been struggling since its new generation 3DS device flopped shortly after its February launch.

"Inside our office, I've been recently declaring, 'I'm going to retire, I'm going to retire," the Wired.com website quoted Miyamoto as saying, via an 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."

The Kyoto-based firm was forced to slash the price of its 3DS by about 40 percent six months after launch, and cut its forecast to a net loss for the year. Markets also reacted negatively to the unveiling of the successor to the Wii at the E3 games show in June.

The launch of a raft of new software, including Mario titles, has propped up 3DS sales, at least inJapan, President Satoru Iwata said in an interview with the Nikkei business daily this week.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/08/us-nintendo-idUSTRE7B70C520111208

3Ds sales are up everywhere hardware and software....

What is this guy talking about???

Whaaaaaat? He's keeping his position now?

So basically it is back to how he was in the start of the wii generation. He is training younger talent to take over him.

well, he has to retire some time, but sure he has even more to offer the coming years

He wants to "Retire" as in he wants to stop leading as a producer and gets in front of the development teams again like he did in older days.
why are so many people too dumb to understand this?

I really don't believe Miyamoto will ever retire entirely from Nintendo. His choice to help train youth and younger employees will continue till the day he dies. He also said a little while back that he wanted to go back to making games himself and that he may not be completely satisfied with his current position.

I suspect nothing major will change. Miyamoto might shift back to more of a developer role then producing and running the show. He doesn't appear to enjoy that as much as actually creating new games himself and training and working with new prodigies.

I suspect that Miyamoto will die still working for Nintendo. If he does retire it likely won't be till he hits mid to late eighties. Look at other entertainment masters in film and such, they live for their jobs. They love their jobs and they don't retire until they physically have too.

So now we have reuters saying the device "flopped," which is a very final thing to say...

The 3DS flopped? are this guys living in the past?

lol @ 3DS "flopped".