"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," Nintendo head of development and long-time game industry figurehead Shigeru Miyamoto told Wired's Game|Life blog in an interview this week. It appears that, after a lengthy career spent creating some of the game industry's most popular and important franchises, Miyamoto is altering his role at the company.

"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," he further explained. Miyamoto isn't quitting development, though. Apparently he's looking to start a new project in 2012, and hopes to show it publicly by year's end.

"In other words, I'm not intending to start from things that require a five-year development time," he added. While he won't be changing roles immediately, the idea behind announcing his retirement is it will spur the less veteran devs at Nintendo to step up. "I'm interested in doing a variety of many other things," he teased. Like you, we'll be anxiously waiting to see what those "other things" are.