Shigeru Miyamoto will no longer be in charge of Nintendo’s most significant games. This includes the likes of Mario and Zelda. Miyamoto has previously hinted at – and has now confirmed – that he’ll be allowing the younger staffers at Nintendo to lead the company’s more significant projects.
Miyamoto told Wired:
“Inside our office, I’ve been recently declaring, ‘I’m going to retire, I’m going to retire.’ 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. What I really want to do is be in the forefront of game development once again myself. Probably working on a smaller project with even younger developers. Or I might be interested in making something that I can make myself, by myself. Something really small. …In other words, I’m not intending to start from things that require a five-year development time.”
Why is Miyamoto going in this direction? He explained:
“I’m saying this because I have a solid reaction from the existing teams. I was able to nurture the developers inside Nintendo who were able to create something like this or something like that. … The reason why I’m stressing that is that unless I say that I’m retiring, I cannot nurture the young developers. After all, if I’m there in my position as it is, then there’s always kind of a relationship. And the young guys are always kind of in a situation where they have to listen to my ideas. But I need some people who are growing up much more than today. …Anyway, I’m interested in doing a variety of many other things.”
Miyamoto is currently planning to begin making a new title in 2012. If all goes well, he hopes to reveal the game to fans within the year.
The image basically speaks for itself. It comes from a Singaporean government site… and that’s pretty much it! There’s talk that the Wii U is on its fourth development kit at this time, though the image above makes me think that Nintendo has shipped out fifth edition units.