thats probably true with lots of software companies anymore. Only the best of the best can survive in a very competitive job market

This is an issue of double edged sword.

Yes highering with higher degree of quality students is a good thing, but often what many people consider the golden age are born by people outside of the industry that consider it a hobby and passion.

As an example of another industry is NHL. Whenever a few great hockey stars come from a town it seems that town tries to train the 'Next Gretsky". Often this push increases the overall skill of the playerbase, but drives out personal passion and achievement.

Miyamoto is a person with a passion of ideas. These ideas didn't spawn from an education in game development, but an inspiration of love.

We get on the industry case of lack of innovation or some matter or another, but when it comes down to it the reason why these problems occur is because companies are highering from the same trained(read formula) pool.

If you look back as to where the "Great Game Designers" come from you will find that most of them didn't go to school for game designing or an area that focuses much on games at all. Though you do find a few that do.

Exactly.  One look at what the so called elite talent from Harvard did to the financial industry should tip hiring managers off.  What I don't get is why are these financial companies so worried about keeping the talent that destroyed the economy with large bonuses?

MMMM...then Nintendo wouldn't be so great now

Nintendo at present is going about this the wrong way. You can't measure creativity and passion by what degree you have.

These corporations, they suck the life out of creativity and innovation with their formulaic adherence to standards.

Another nice tidbit. The Pokemon creator (Satoshi Tajiri) has Asperger's (a group that is immensely discriminated against in the work place even though it's clear that many of them can make a positive contribution to society). If his first employer in the gaming industry (I believe it was Namco?) did the typical corporate thing to do (overlook him in the job interview because he has poor social skills), there would be no Pokemon today.

There are so many creative, eccentric talents out there that would have been shut out of the industry if their employer stuck to the sterile, strict adherence to standards.

Geez what is with the modesty today at Nintendo haha.

For the past month, Nintendo has been reflecting on many thingsthey have done wrong in the past, and more recent mistakes; I like it.

They have touched base on many issues they have encountered and are making efforts to rectify it.

With all the attention placed on hiring skilled creative/eccentric people, making "core" games harder, revitalizing Zelda, releasing 3 classics on the Virtual Console in 1 week, increased 3rd party cooperation, and enforced marketing/advertising Nintendo is plugging every leak. Ifthey come through on their promises:

2010 will be a very dangerous year for Nintendo's competitors; Nintendo is going for knock-outs.

But yea but if there is any developer that has bragging rights it is Miyamoto... he doesn't need to be so modest all the time haha.  Oh well I guess he boasts around every now and then.

And yea NIntendo has been making strides lately but they've been doing that for years... just making it more PR right now it seems.  But I think most of the development "slowing" simply had to do with some internal issues (mainly connections with second party developers) and simply their usual long development processes for key games.  But seems like they are back with it now.

In Japanese society, modesty, even extreme modest, is the norm. The arrogance you see from some Japanese game developers/CEOs comes from the fact that money corrupts. The Japanese do not praise their own work, or others' work, very often, but they will criticize their own.