*UPDATE*
It has been confirmed by Nintendo of Japan that Miyamoto will NOT be retiring from his roles as head of EAD. He is only scaling back what he works on, and trying to set things up for the day he does leave Nintendo. He will also continue to work on big Nintendo games, such as Mario, Zelda,etc.
IGN
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OK, that title was a bit misleading. Famed developer and creator of the Legend of Zelda series Shigeru Miyamoto has declared that he will no longer actively be involved in the development of Nintendo’s big-name franchises, many of which he created. Instead, the 59 year old Miyamoto states:
“Inside our office, I’ve been recently declaring, ‘I’m going to retire, I’m going to retire,’” Miyamoto said through his interpreter. “I’m not saying that I’m going to retire from game development altogether. What I mean by retiring is, retiring from my current position.”
“What I really want to do is be in the forefront of game development once again myself,” Miyamoto said. “Probably working on a smaller project with even younger developers. Or I might be interested in making something that I can make myself, by myself. Something really small.”
It seems Miyamoto wants to both rejoin the ranks of active developers, something he has not done since the 1990s, while at the same time training Nintendo’s younger talent to take the reins when his real retirement day approaches. Needless to say, Miyamoto won’t be around forever, and it’s great to see he has a plan in place to see to it that Nintendo can continue to remain well ahead of the pack in gameplay design. Personally, I doubt he’s going to completely stop support the development of Mario, Zelda, etc in some capacity, but likely far more as an occasional advisory role as opposed to day to day advising.
Source: Wired
