Topic: Nintendo Prepares for Life After Miyamoto

[NWR_insanolord]

The last one he made, and the only one he made recently, wasn't good, largely because of his philosophical stance on the series. It's perfectly justified to be wary about any future installments he may make. He did, however, after making Fusion, another game criticized for some of the same tendencies, turn around and make Zero Mission, which I could see arguments made for being the best game in the series, so for all we know his next could be amazing.

[NWR_Neal]

And then he made Kikitrick, which is crazy-pants bonkers. So we're cool.

[ShyGuy]

Miyamoto will grab the master sword and become the hero of time, problem solved.

[NWR_DrewMG]

this is news re-interation, i swear this was a news item months ago

edit: now having read the article to where my statement is redundant, i still don't see the point of this article.

The point is that Nintendo held a Q&A session with their stockholders, and one of the questions a stockholder asked was "what will you do when Miyamoto retires" and this was their answer. 

[Infinitys_End]

I love how an article about Miyamoto retiring turns into a Sakamoto bash-fest.  *facepalm*


But kudos to those who defended him.  AFAIC, he doesn't deserve ANY of the immature bullsh!t that people give him.

[Chozo Ghost]

Even if Sakamoto isn't as bad as he's made out to be, he's still not as legendary as Miyamoto. So I still stand by what I said earlier about rather having him retire than Miyamoto. That's not so much bashing Sakamoto as it is acknowledging that Miyamoto is much better. Doesn't everyone agree with that? Is there anyone out there who thinks Sakamoto is better than Miyamoto?

I'm fine with Sakamoto continuing to work at Nintendo and doing his warioware mini games and trivial fluff like that, but I don't want him to ever have the reigns of the Metroid franchise again. I don't hate him, I just would prefer he stick to Warioware and such.

[broodwars]

Well, I hope Nintendo's been planning for "life after" their older designers (not just Miyamoto) for quite some time now, because otherwise they're in real trouble.  In any case, I have the utmost respect for Mr. Miyamoto.  He's designed some of the most memorable games I've played in my life, and he's been the spearhead for so many other beloved titles.  At Nintendo's annual press conference, he's consistently the only guy on-stage who appears to actually have a pulse.  I'll gladly look forward to whatever smaller titles he wants to work on until his actual retirement.  But when he leaves, I want whoever takes over from him to not just try to maintain the status quo.  We're getting to the point where the new generation of great Nintendo designers have to come into their own.

Among many other problems, the Japanese game industry (especially) seems to have something metaphorically akin to an inbreeding problem: the old men who started the company train the next generation to make the same games they made.  Then, when the new generation takes over, they continue under the direct approval of a committee run by the old men who trained them, who direct them to continue to make the same kind of games.  I feel there's a lot of passion and creativity that gets lost in that system.  I don't want to see that when we start losing these legendary designers at Nintendo.  I want to see what the passion and inventiveness of a new generation can bring to Nintendo.

Until then, I'm interested to see what Miyamoto can do when he's not under the pressure of keeping an eye on half a dozen decades-old Nintendo properties at once.

[Ian Sane]

Among many other problems, the Japanese game industry (especially) seems to have something metaphorically akin to an inbreeding problem: the old men who started the company train the next generation to make the same games they made.  Then, when the new generation takes over, they continue under the direct approval of a committee run by the old men who trained them, who direct them to continue to make the same kind of games.  I feel there's a lot of passion and creativity that gets lost in that system.  I don't want to see that when we start losing these legendary designers at Nintendo.  I want to see what the passion and inventiveness of a new generation can bring to Nintendo.

Yeah, that would suck.  Might be inevitable.  It's weird to think that the games of my childhood were essentially the whole start of the Japanese videogame market and that the creativity seen then was partially because there wasn't a formula yet.  If the old companies died off would new ones take their place or would the whole Japanese gaming market just die?

Of course it all depends what Nintendo is teching their young employees.  Are they teaching them to just make a million Mario games or is it more timeless stuff like how to make gameplay intuitive to the player or lessons on maintaining high quality.  There are some broad practices that are common in Nintendo games that would be good to imprint on the next generation.  One example is that Nintendo games don't usually bog you down with unnecessary items or superflous areas.  They don't put in moves you never use or use five buttons to do something that can be done with two.  Their games are tight, for lack of a better word, like a movie with great pacing.  That sort of thing should be taught to their later generations.  If they just stuck with the existing franchises though, that would be lame.  They should encourage the next gen of designers to carve their own identity while maintaining the Nintendo standard of quality.