Part 2 Of The Miitomo Interview Talks About Iwata’s Secret Development Team At Nintendo

Part two of the Miitomo interview with Sakamoto and Itoi has been published. This time, the pair talk about a secret development team that Satoru Iwata had at Nintendo. Itoi said that “Shigeru Miyamoto is like a super man when it comes to making games. So, I think that common industry wisdom would have it that all of the development departments would show every little thing to Mr. Miyamoto. But if that was the case then gradually all of Mr. Miyamoto’s time would be taken up. Also, maybe all of the games would end up being serious, full-length games. So maybe that is why Mr. Iwata made this team that was making stuff without Mr. Miyamoto’s knowledge. So, the result was that two centers of thought developed at Nintendo. The one under Mr. Miyamoto, and one outside of Mr. Miyamoto’s circle. Mr. Iwata liked Mr. Miyamoto more than anyone and deeply respected him, but he thought that if everything was left to Mr. Miyamoto then Nintendo would go down only one path, so he ventured to make a team that was not under the supervision of Mr. Miyamoto. And Mr. Iwata managed the team himself, and he had us make games that could be developed in half a year. And that had a direct impact on Nintendo’s ability to regularly release games. So the thought to hide things from Mr. Miyamoto was Mr. Iwata’s idea”.

Sakamoto says he is not part of Miyamoto’s team, and he says that “all this time I was left to grow free-range”. According to Sakamoto, “Animal Crossing is one of the development projects that Mr. Miyamoto does oversee”. However, Tomodachi Collection, which is one of the projects Sakamoto has worked on, is “completely different”.

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