Nintendo’s ‘technology fellow’ Genyo Takeda is retiring

Nintendo has used its end of year financial report to announce that Genyo Takeda is retiring from the company. Takeda has been at Nintendo for over 45 years since the 1970s.

Takeda has been a producer on many games, was the director for Punch-Out!! and StarTropics but was more involved in hardware design. He led development on the battery save for the original Zelda games, the Nintendo 64’s analogue controls and was also one of the lead developers of the Wii. He’s perhaps known best for his belief that Nintendo shouldn’t follow other companies into an never ending cycle of graphical improvements for consoles. Speaking in an Iwata Asks feature he is quoted as saying;

If Nintendo had followed existing roadmaps we would have aimed to make the Wii faster and flashier. We’d have tried to improve the speed at which it displays stunning graphics. But we could not help but ask, ‘How big an impact would that really have on our customers?’ In development, we came to realize the sheer inefficiency of this path when we compared the hardships and costs of development against the new experiences customers might have.”

In 2015, Takeda became the “Technology Fellow” at Nintendo, the counterpart to Shigeru Miyamoto’s title of “Creative Fellow”. Takeda will finish at Nintendo on June 29th.

A retirement well deserved, thank you Mr Takeda!