Miyamoto’s Lineage

If you want to take a long look at Miyamoto’s history, and his accomplishments and failures, Next-Gen has the backstory. Read on:

Nintendo’s at the top of its game again – or near enough to clap, anyway. It’s managing to climb out of a position so perilous that a few short years ago, some commentators predicted it would quit the hardware business. How did it fall so low, and how has it climbed back up again?

The DS is one of the bigger success stories in recent hardware history. People are starting to buy into the Wii hype; even Sony and Microsoft’s chiefs have gone on record with how the system impresses them. Japan is mincing no words; 73% of Famitsu readers polled expect the Wii to “win” the next “console war”.

Satoru Iwata has done a fantastic job, the last couple of years, taking a company that was coasting on past success, whose reputation had diminished significantly – that even posted a loss for the first time in its century-plus history – and making it both vital and trendy again.

So what happened to Nintendo, anyway? How is it that gaming’s superstar was such a dud, for so many years? In a way, the story of Nintendo these past 20 years – the highs and the lows – is also the story of one man; Shigeru Miyamoto.
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