For a number of years now, Shigeru Miyamoto’s role at Nintendo has been evolving—originally a producer with plenty of hands-on time in a number of established franchises, these days there’s less micro-managing and more of an oversight role. This has come about due to game designer and president Satoru Iwata regularly emphasizing his and the company’s wish to nurture, develop, and support a new wave of leading talent that can continue to move these game franchises forward in the future.
For The Official Nintendo Magazine’s 100th issue, an interview with Miyamoto heard him outlining how there are now a number of trusted leaders in place who produce the franchises we’ve come to know and love from Nintendo. Ultimately, the responsibility for the games lies on his shoulders, but the dynamic is different:
“As you saw at our presentation at E3, Mr Aonuma chased me off stage… he doesn’t need me any more! The final responsibility for the title still comes down to me and I’m still involved in the games, but I’m definitely able to leave the series up to him in a way.
… I don’t have to look at every minute detail of every game any more. I know there’s going to be the level of quality that we expect under his supervision.
Similarly we have Koizumi-san, who’s the producer for the Mario series and it’s the same type of situation. And certainly Konno-san with Mario Kart, too. And Mr Eguchi, producer of the Animal Crossing series. These are the main producers that we’ve trained who are talented enough and we can allow them to oversee the project and manage all the details and still maintain the Nintendo level of quality.”
Some day, Mr. Miyamoto will have to step aside, and when that day comes the hope is that none of us who play the games will even notice—because the “Nintendo standard” will be maintained, due to the way these internal changes progressed. Key titles lately certainly haven’t shown any slippage that we’ve noticed, so things appear to be going quite smoothly so well.
That’s good news for all of us—and congratulations to The Official Nintendo Magazine on their 100th issue!
