Miyamoto: ‘strange’ not to think about retirement
Mario, Zelda creator will turn 61 this year, is taking steps to prepare Nintendo for a future without him.
Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of famed franchises like Mario, Zelda, and Donkey Kong, has no intentions of immediately retiring, but has taken measured steps to make sure Nintendo is prepared for the day he no longer works at the Japanese game giant.
“This year I’m past 60; I’m going to be turning 61 this year. So for me to not be thinking about retirement would be strange,” Miyamoto told GameSpot today. “But in fact, the number of projects I’m involved in--and the volume of my work--hasn’t changed at all."
“Instead, what we’re doing internally is, on the assumption that there may someday be a time when I’m no longer there, and in order for the company to prepare for that, what I’m doing is pretending like I’m not working on half the projects that I would normally be working on to try to get the younger staff to be more involved,” he added.
This initiative is not directly related to Miyamoto’s retirement, he said, but is rather aimed at adjusting organizational structure at Nintendo.
“And this actually has nothing to do with any kind of retirement planning or anything of that sort, it’s really more of simply the fact that people have a tendency, certainly when you’re in an organizational structure, they have a tendency to always look to the person that gives them direction," Miyamoto said. "And really, for a long time I’ve been thinking that we need to try to break that structure down so that the individual producers that I’m working with are really taking responsibility for the projects that they’re working on.”
As a result, Miyamoto said he would rather have his producers focus on pleasing the consumer and not him.
“And as I like to say, I try to duck out of the way, so that instead of them looking at me, they’re looking at the consumer and trying to develop their games with the consumer in mind rather than me in mind. So it’s really more of looking at this as sort of an opportunity to really try to help develop them and bring them up.”
GameSpot will have more from Miyamoto on a range of topics like Lugi's Mansion: Dark Moon, Pikmin 3, Wii U struggles, and more in the time ahead
Eddie Makuch (Mack-ooh) is a News Editor at GameSpot. He works out of the company's Boston office in Somerville, Mass., and loves extra chunky peanut butter.
