Nintendo Clarifies Miyamoto Retirement Interview

This morning, Nintendo was in damage control after word broke out last night of Shigeru Miyamoto’s intent to step down from his current duties at the company, and instead focus on smaller, quicker turnaround projects.  To be fair, it appeared in the Wired.com interview that Miyamoto used a humorous threat of retirement to motivate his team of late, and most thorough readers realized the story did not necessarily mean Miyamoto was out.  We were very careful to make that distinction in our story citing the interview this morning.

Nevertheless, Nintendo issued a statement this morning denying Miyamoto was retiring, or even relinquishing his current roles.

“Video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto’s role at Nintendo is not changing,” the statement read in part.  “In discussing his priorities at Nintendo in a media interview, Mr Miyamoto explained how he is encouraging the younger developers at the company to take more initiative and responsibility for developing software. He attempted to convey his priorities moving forward, inclusive of overseeing all video game development and ensuring the quality of all products.”

Those remarks, however, did little to settle nervous investors.  Nintendo stock closed down more than 3 percent today on the NASDAQ market, hovering near a 52 week low.