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Takahashi on his role at Nintendo, following traditions, Miyamoto on transitioning to younger devs
Coming from a TIME interview with Nintendo's Shinya Takahashi...
"Nintendo Entertainment Planning & Development...I'm overseeing all of that, but I view my role as being more someone who's overseeing our producers. I really look at them more as my stable of talent, and I'm their manager. That includes Mr. Miyamoto. Lately I've enjoyed saying, 'I'm Mr. Miyamoto's manager.'"
Our tradition at Nintendo, and this comes from Mr. Yamauchi, is that we're not a games company, but an entertainment company. When we're making a game, the first question we always ask is, 'How are we going to entertain the player with what we're creating?' Or, in something that's maybe a bit more of what you'd call Kansai style, Kansai being the region of Japan where Kyoto is, 'How are we going to make them laugh?'
I don't know if I'll have to do things like [Nintendo Directs] going forward. As Mr. Iwata was doing all of those things in front of the camera, I was behind the scenes supporting him, of course along with a number of others, but I hope maybe I can keep that up."
Coming from Reggie Fils-Aime...
"If all of Nintendo's content creators were to be seen as a symphony, then Mr. Takahashi is our conductor,. What I mean by that is, it's his decision to bring the different players in our orchestra onto a particular game or a particular initiative. He's the ultimate decision maker in what gets played by the symphony or what gets created by Nintendo as a company."
Coming from Shigeru Miyamoto...
"On our end, we're eventually going to have to retire. So instead of rushing and fumbling when that happens, we wanted to use Nintendo Switch as a kind of turning point to hand over more to the younger generation. After choosing the members to be onstage, we started to think, 'Wow, maybe we should've chosen a younger bunch of people!'"