So we're in round FOUR of the "Is Shigeru Miyamoto retiring?" saga. A summation:
Round one, Miyamoto tells Chirs Kohler that yes, he is retiring. Retire" is an odd word to use for the world's biggest game designer stepping down from his managerial role at Nintendo to, no other way to put it, design video games. See, Miyamoto supervises the people who supervise the game designers. He's beena manager way longer than he's been a designer, but he's now going ot go do true game design. Neat.
Round two happens when Nintendo's stock price plunges, and Nintendo gets apR person to say that what Miyamoto said was "absolutely not true." Kohler quoted a whole pargraph of Miyamoto saying he was stepping down, why he was stepping down,a nd what he would be doing, so this isn't a mistranslated word. Nintendo's denial seems very fishy.
Round three was Nintendo trying to be less "I don't suck, YOU suck" and more diplomatic. The issue of how exactly a man can be so misquoted was again avoided, and instead this mild platitude came forth:
That brings up to round four, where Nintendo had given Kohler the third and possibly final refutation of Miyamoto's "retirement statement." Here's their weather-balloon moment. I'm using "weather-balloon moment" because of the UFO crash in Roswell, which after years of the government response being "Nope, didn't happen" was unsatisfactory. Offering an alternate explanation for facts is always a better strategy than simply calling anyone who states facts a liar. Hence: "yeah, okay, something DID crash, but it was a weather balloon."
What is Nintendo's weather balloon? "[Miyamoto] jokingly mentions retirement to motivate his staff to excel." Aha! What a masterstroke! See, THIS interpretation allows Miyamoto to be accurately quoted. But it's HE who lied! Except he was merely being playful, to inspire his troops. Best of all, the impetus for Miyamoto lying, and the supposed result of it, is the betterment of Nintendo.
A beautiful, balletic lie...that only came a week too late to do any good.
