Miyamoto to Move Toward Smaller Projects at Nintendo

While not necessarily Sonic or Sega related, we wanted to relay some major news that broke Wednesday evening on Wired.com.  There, a story teasing an interview with  Shigeru Miyamoto, the man behind Mario and Zelda among other many other franchises and basically Nintendo’s equivalent of Yuji Naka, reveals the gaming giant plans to assume a lesser role within the company that’s employed him since the late 1970s.

“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,” Miyamoto told Wired’s Chris Kohler.  “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.”

The article and Miyamoto pretty clearly convey the message that Mario, Zelda, and countless other key Nintendo franchises will no longer have their creator overseeing those future projects.  The article claims Miyamoto is comfortable making the move, given the success other developers had with the latest Mario and Zelda franchise entries.

“I’m interested in doing a variety of many other things,” Miyamoto said.

If this sounds familiar, that’s because Yuji Naka pulled a similar move more than five and a half years ago, before the launch of the 2006 Sonic the Hedgehog.  Mr. Naka left Sonic Team and founded independent development house Prope, which of late has released an array of small games for iOS and somewhat more robust fare for the Wii.  Though Mr. Naka technically left the mothership, Prope was established with a ¥1 million Sega investment.

To be clear, Miyamoto says he won’t be leaving Nintendo proper.  But for the 59 year old, it is clearly a step toward eventual retirement, the cap of a very illustrious and celebrated career.