Miyamoto. The man needs no introduction. He has been a mainstay in the industry almost since it’s inception, and today it has been revealed that he is stepping down from his position as Senior Managing Director and General Manager of Nintendo’s Entertainment Analysis and Development Division.

In an interview with Wired’s Chris Kohler, Miyamoto stated will be passing the torch to younger developers within the company, and working on smaller projects.

“Inside our office, I’ve been recently declaring, I’m going to retire, I’m going to retire. I’m not saying that I’m going to retire from game development altogether. What I mean by retiring is, retiring from my current position.”

“What I really want to do is be in the forefront of game development once again myself. Probably working on a smaller project with even younger developers. Or I might be interested in making something that I can make myself, by myself. Something really small. In other words, I’m not intending to start from things that require a five-year development time”

“I’m saying this because I have a solid reaction from the existing teams. I was able to nurture the developers inside Nintendo who were able to create something like this or something like that. The reason why I’m stressing that is that unless I say that I’m retiring, I cannot nurture the young developers. After all, if I’m there in my position as it is, then there’s always kind of a relationship. And the young guys are always kind of in a situation where they have to listen to my ideas. But I need some people who are growing up much more than today.”

I for one will miss Miyamoto and all the eccentricity he brought to the table. How do you feel? Tell us in the comments.

UPDATE: Nintendo has denied that Miyamoto is stepping down.

Satoru Iwata is the fourth president of Nintendo, and has seen the company through it’s highest highs, and now it’s lowest lows. For Nintendo to get back on top, it is going to take something special from Iwata, and in this months semi-annual financial results briefing he discusses just how the company plans to do so.

One of the key items on Iwata’s agenda is to gain support from third parties, and to help them as needed to bring games to their platforms.

I think one of the very important jobs of Nintendo is to identify the third-party software made in Japan which, we believe, will have a strong affinity with the tastes in the overseas markets and, thus, have a strong market potential there, and we will collaborate with them to make these titles into hits. So, with these different efforts, we would like to enrich the software lineup for the markets outside Japan as well from next year, which will become one of the contributing factors for our improved profitability in the next fiscal year.

As I have been echoing for awhile now, all Nintendo needs to be successful is games, games games. Oh and games. If they can not only get third parties to bring their titles to Nintendo platforms, but to be successful in doing so, it will go a long way towards earning back some of the goodwill that was lost from fans and developers alike.

With many heavy hitting franchises scheduled to appear on 3DS in the coming months and into 2012, I can only imagine that Nintendo will again gain much of the momentum that they had when Wii and DS were both on top of their game. I think the success of Wii U will be largely determined by it’s price point, and only time will tell how much it will be at launch.

As a long time Nintendo fan, it hurts to see the company I love in such a rut at the moment, but I have faith that they will turn things around. Regardless, it isn’t going to stop me from enjoying my most anticipated games of the year in Skyward Sword and Super Mario 3D Land. I can hardly wait.