Shigeru Miyamoto talks about preparing Nintendo for after he retires

Shigeru Miyamoto is easily a legend within the gaming industry. The father of the likes of Mario, Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda and many other beloved characters and franchises is well respected by his peers for his achievements and loved by fans. One asks what will happen when he retires?

In an interview, Miyamoto discusses how he is currently preparing Nintendo for the time when he retires by getting some of the younger members of the team there more involved with the development process.

“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. 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.” 

“Ad 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,” 

“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.”

It will be a weird time when Miyamoto retires. He has been around since Nintendo revived the video game market with the NES it at times feels bizarre that there will be a time where Miyamoto will not be making games. Regardless it is great he is helping the future producers and developers of Nintendo ease into their future roles.

Source: Gamespot