Shigeru Miyamoto is responsible for some of the most iconic video games ever made, not least the “Super Mario Bros” franchise, but he says that, if he were just starting out nowadays, Nintendo probably wouldn’t hire him.
“Nintendo has become one of those companies that graduates from colleges and good universities really want to work for,” he said in an interview with Edge Magazine. “Because of that, the competition’s really become so fierce for positions. And that means that a lot of the recent recruits for Nintendo have tended to have the higher degrees from the prestigious colleges and universities and whatnot.” Miyamoto went on to note that, as a result, “I often say to Mr. Iwata, “If I was applying for a job here today, I, with my actual college degree, would probably not have been employed by Nintendo.” He adds that, personally, “I might pick up on and try to find out something really different within them which you can’t just judge by a college degree…. That’s one of the special little jobs I set myself.”
In the same interview, Miyamoto also notes that his involvement with the industry has changes surprisingly little, except in one area – that of hardware. “A long time ago, my role in designing the actual hardware was really limited – mostly it was down to designing the controller, or the controlling interface… but I think, probably from around the time of the DS, my involvement with hardware has significantly changed… I’ve been able to significantly oversee the overall development of the hardware as well as keeping an eye on the software side of things.”
