Miyamoto discusses how Nintendo will eventually go on without him
"It's not going to change."
Nintendo's legendary Shigeru Miyamoto has been asked how he thinks the company will fare without him one day.
Miyamoto, now 70, originally joined Nintendo in 1977, before going on to help create Donkey Kong, Mario and The Legend of Zelda. In the decades since, Miyamoto has become synonymous with Nintendo, and his projects have continually found huge success.
In an interview with NPR, Miyamoto was asked what Nintendo will look like without him. His response? That actually, it would be very similar.
"You know, I really feel like it's not going to change," Miyamoto answered. "It's probably going to be the same. There's, you know, people on the executive team, creators within the company and also people who create Mario, they all have this sense of what it means to be Nintendo."
Miyamoto served as the boss of Nintendo's internal studios until 2015, when he took on the more senior title of "Creative Fellow".
Once a regular face during Nintendo live events and Direct broadcasts, Miyamoto now typically only appears for announcements directly related to projects he is involved in - such as presenting details of the Super Mario Bros. Movie, or the long-awaited Pikmin 4.
"It's not like there's a lot of different opinions that go back and forth. Everyone has an understanding, this kind of shared understanding, of what it is to be Nintendo," Miyamoto continued. "And so even when there's new ideas that come up, there's always the fact that it's a new idea, but also the fact that, is it a new idea that really has the essence of Nintendo or not?"
Nintendo developers have a "shared vision" for the company that all staff understand, Miyamoto continues, even to a "little scary" degree.
"We have this incredible shared vision, almost a little scary shared vision, about this," he concluded. "So I think there won't - it's not going to change."
Not content with that answer on Miyamoto's future, NPR went on to ask which fictional world he created that he might want to "live in for eternity" after death.
"I really love the work environment that I'm in because I get to engage in so many different things," Miyamoto replied. "So it'd be great if, you know, I could be in an environment where I can change the kind of work I do all the time. So I think it might just be my desk or my bathtub."
Nintendo's 2023 is expected to be dominated by the May launch of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, before Pikmin 4 later in the year. Oh, and there's also that Chris Pratt-voiced Mario movie.