It's fair to say that Shigeru Miyamoto is the Stan Lee of the video game industry. Miyamoto's creations make up some of the most iconic video game characters of all time. He even had a direct hand in bringing other important series to life, such as the Pokémon franchise. The entire i💛ndustry will grind to a halt on the day that Miyamoto passes, in order to give ever⛦yone time to pay their respects to one of the titans of video game history.

Shigeru Miyamoto is currently sixty-five years old, yet he is still an 🅘important figure at Nintendo. He is present for every major announcement and for most important trade shows, such as E3 or the Tokyo Game Show.

So what exactly does 🐈Shigeru Miyamoto dꦐo at Nintendo in 2018?

Shigeru Miyamoto's current title is "Creative Fellow." He briefly held the title of "Representative Director" following the death of Satoru Iwata, though this was only a tempo🐟rary position while the high-ranking roles in the company were being restructured. Miyamoto was previously a Senior Executive at the company, which was a role he held for thirteen yea🥀rs.

Shigeru Miyamoto seems to have taken a more hands-off approach with the games that he has worked on in recent years. His most recent credit is the Executive Producer/Creative Director on Super Mario Odyssey. Those people who have worked on the game that Miyamoto's main role in the game was to offer advice and feedback🦹, rather th💖an to give concrete decisions on the direction of development.

The other games that Shigeru Miyamoto worked on in 2017 were Arms, Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was a port without many new additions and Breath of the Wild was practically finished at the start of the year, as it was released in March. Miyamoto also had little to say about Arms in public and it was mostly represented by othe꧅r Nintendo employees at trade shows, so his influence on the game likely was🅠n't that important.

(via Ubisoft)

This leaves Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, which was produced by Ubisoft. Shigeru Miyamoto did play an important role in the creative direction of the game, as Ubisoft originally pitched their idea to him directly in order to seek his stamp of approval. Miyamoto th♕en collaborated with Ubisoft on the game, in order to make sure that the worlds of Mario and Rayman could be crossed over into a fun game. Yves Guillemot (the CEO of Ubisoft) has talked about the important role Miyamoto played in determining the aesthetic of the game and helping to bring the humor of the Rabbids into the forefront.

It's clear that S𝓀higeru Miyamoto's position has moved to a more advisory role than that of being directly responsible for the fate of a project. All of his credits on recent games have the words "Supervisor" o🥂r "General" in them, which suggests a less important role in the production process.

This diminished capacity may be a response to some of the failures of the Wii U library. The most obvious of these was Star Fox Zero, which was savaged in the reviews due to its poor implementation of the Wii U GamePad into gameplay, which made it a lot harder to play the game. There were also other titles that Miyamoto worked on that were well-received but didn't sell particularly well, such as Pikmin 3 and Paper Mario: Color Splash. Super Mario Run also failed to meet its profit goals, despite Miyamoto's endorseme🦄nt of the title.

As far as Shigeru Miyamoto's own opinion goes: he seems to be more than happy to let younger designers step up and become rising stars at Nintendo. Miyamoto said in an interview with  that “More and more I am tryi💛ng to let the younger generation 𝓀fully take the reins."

(via IGN)

It seems that Shigeru Miyamoto's role in the company is that of a figurehead: he is one of the most recognizable faces at Nintendo and his voice carr🍬ies a lot of weight with the higher-ups. Miyamoto will likely still be seen representing the company at important events for the foreseeable future, but his role within the actual development of games has been diminished, which is partly due to his own desire to pass the torch onto others within the company.

With the passing of Sator♔u Iwata, it seems that Shigeru Miyamoto has had to step up and take a more direct role in representing the company, rather than just working on games. This has come during a time when he ไis no longer a young man, so there is a limit to how long he can fulfill this role.

With the Nintendo Switch bringing the company back into the home console market, it seems that Shigeru Miyamoto will have to stick around for just a bit longer. The success of the Switch might also have the opposite effect and convince Miyamoto that the company that he dedicated most of his life to is now ꦜin good hands and that he can retire from the Mushroom Kingdom for good. Only time will tell how the Switch's success will influence Miyamoto's decisions going forward.