Nintendo’s Miyamoto discusses passing baton to ‘even younger’ developers

Nintendo’s creative leader, Shigeru Miyamoto has discussed passing development responsibilities on to an “even younger” generation, as he approaches his 72^nd birthday.

Despite being well into retirement age, the Super Mario and Zelda creator has previously insisted he’s not considering ending his career in the near future.

Miyamoto was asked about his future again during Nintendo’s annual shareholder meeting on Thursday – transcribed by X user NStyles and translated from Japanese by VGC – and said that even those he previously passed responsibilities to are now getting older.

“I appreciate your concern. Being the oldest among us now makes me feel a bit anxious,” he said, when asked about his health and future intentions. “However, I am comfortable working within the company.

“While I am not completely disconnected from game development, I am no longer involved in the day-to-day work and leave it to the younger generation,” he added.

“The transition is going well, but even those I handed this over to are getting older, so I want to pass the baton to even younger people. I am still closely involved with Pikmin Bloom, so I hope you will continue to support it.”

Miyamoto – who joined Nintendo from college in 1977 –  is best known as the creator of some of its best-selling game franchises, including Super Mario, Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, F-Zero, Pikmin and Star Fox.

In recent years, he has stepped away from hands-on game development, co-producing The Super Mario Bros Movie along with Illumination founder Chris Meledandri, and overseeing the Super Nintendo World theme park attraction.

Miyamoto has taken supervisory roles on game projects for most of the past decade. The most recent games he is known to have been more heavily involved in were Pikmin Bloom (2021), Star Fox Zero (2016), Super Mario Run (2016), and Luigi’s Mansion 2 (2013).

Speaking to The Guardian in an interview published earlier this year, Miyamoto discussed his plans for the future, stating, “more so than retiring, I’m thinking about the day I fall over”.

He added: “In this day and age you have to think about things in a five-year timespan, so I do think about who I can pass things on to, in case something does happen.

“I’m really thankful that there is so much energy around things that I have worked on. These are things that have already gone out into the world … they’ve been cultivated by others, other people have been raising them, helping them grow, so in that sense I don’t feel too much ownership over them any more.”