waffle

It was the year everyone died.

Please let 2012 be the year everyone lived.

Shigeru Miyamoto steps down to work on smaller projects.

This is a good thing. Shigeru Miyamoto and his creations have dominated the picture of what Nintendo means. Nintendo has been successful and put out remarkable games; if Nintendo is in a rut, it hasn’t been because of him. But when the Japanese traditions meet Shigeru Miyamoto’s own role as a successful and brilliant director as well as a troublemaker, the window of opportunity for those that want to take Nintendo in additional directions shrinks to almost nothing.

It’s not a coincidence that time after time, Shigeru Miyamoto’s personal interests have dictated new blockbusters (Pikmin and Nintendogs are two particularly visible examples). While it’s great that Nintendo can harness this while Shigeru Miyamoto is around, they will need to start trusting in other people as well. Since Gunpei Yokoi was lost to a traffic accident, no one else has had this level of trust across games and decades. Since Shigeru Miyamoto is so well-rounded, that paints the picture that there’s no room next to him for someone to challenge him, compete against him and complement him.

We know what Nintendo is about. The biggest threat to their future isn’t smart phones, PC gaming, other consoles. It’s not people forgetting what they’re about and it’s not people finding it irrelevant. It’s Nintendo not being able to reinvent what they’re about. Nintendo’s about surprise; their long run plan can’t be about their previous revolutions.

Inscrutable long-time Waffle friend, reader and linker n8 writes well enough about some Scala community venom wrestling that I totally get his important points while still spinning on some details. For one thing, I’m pretty sure knowing what a “bijective map” is is as good a discriminator as any of the kind of people who are proficient in Scala. Nathan particularly picks up an old thread from some comments here about how some people are civil in person.