Nintendo Explains How Miyamoto Helps Preserve Its DNA as the Company Expands

11 July 2026
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9 min.
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Nintendo Explains How Miyamoto Helps Preserve Its DNA as the Company Expands

Summary:

Nintendo is increasing its workforce to strengthen the development of hardware, software and the system software supporting its consoles, but growth presents a delicate challenge. How does a company welcome more employees without diluting the qualities that made its work distinctive in the first place? Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa addressed that question during the company’s 86th Annual General Meeting of Shareholders, outlining how practical experience, teamwork and guidance from veteran employees help pass Nintendo’s values to new generations of staff.

Furukawa described the Nintendo DNA as a combination of originality, flexibility and sincerity. These values are not treated as decorative slogans hanging on an office wall. Nintendo wants employees to encounter them through everyday projects, discussions, challenges and collaboration with colleagues. The company believes people develop not only by improving their individual knowledge and skills, but also by working closely with senior colleagues, supervisors and other team members.

Shigeru Miyamoto also continues to play a role in this process. According to Furukawa, the Executive Fellow participates in new employee training each year, giving incoming staff an opportunity to learn from one of Nintendo’s most experienced creative leaders. Nintendo is also pursuing initiatives from both frontline and management perspectives to keep its working philosophy intact. Rather than attempting to preserve its identity by resisting change, the company appears to be treating growth itself as an opportunity to introduce more people to the principles behind its distinctive approach to entertainment.

Nintendo Explains How It Will Preserve Its DNA

Nintendo’s continued expansion has prompted an important question about the future of the company. More employees can give development teams additional expertise, increase production capacity and help Nintendo support increasingly demanding hardware and software projects. Yet rapid growth can also make a company’s culture harder to maintain. Values once shared naturally among a relatively small group may become less obvious as departments expand, subsidiaries grow and new specialists join from different professional backgrounds. During the 86th Annual General Meeting of Shareholders, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa explained that the company is addressing this challenge through daily work experience, cooperation between employees and initiatives involving both frontline teams and management. His answer suggests that Nintendo does not see its identity as something that can be preserved through a single handbook or presentation. Instead, it must be demonstrated repeatedly through the way employees develop ideas, respond to challenges and work together.

Workforce Growth Raises an Important Cultural Question

Hiring more people is generally a sign of ambition, especially in an industry where modern development demands specialists in programming, art, audio, online infrastructure, security, hardware engineering and countless other disciplines. Nintendo and its subsidiaries have been increasing headcount primarily to strengthen their development capabilities across hardware, software and system software. That wider talent pool can help the company handle larger projects and support its platforms over longer periods, but it also creates a balancing act. Nintendo needs fresh perspectives without allowing its established philosophy to fade into the background. Think of it like expanding a busy kitchen: more chefs can serve more guests, but everyone still needs to understand what makes the restaurant’s dishes recognisable. Furukawa’s response indicates that Nintendo wants its new employees to contribute their own abilities while gradually learning how the company approaches entertainment, teamwork and creative decision-making.

Nintendo Defines Its DNA Through Three Core Values

Nintendo describes its DNA through three connected values: originality, flexibility and sincerity. Originality reflects the company’s desire to deliver entertainment and experiences that feel different rather than simply following whatever happens to be popular. Flexibility concerns Nintendo’s willingness to respond when technology, consumer behaviour or the wider business environment changes. Sincerity centres on trustworthy actions, humility and a willingness to learn from experience. None of these values works particularly well in isolation. Originality without flexibility can leave an idea trapped in the past, while flexibility without originality can result in little more than chasing trends. Sincerity gives both qualities a dependable foundation. By presenting these values as part of everyday working life, Nintendo is effectively asking employees to consider not only whether an idea functions, but whether it feels fresh, suits current circumstances and treats consumers with care. That is a demanding combination, but Nintendo’s most memorable creations have rarely emerged from taking the easiest route.

Practical Experience Remains Central to Employee Growth

Furukawa emphasised that Nintendo employees learn a great deal through work experience. Formal instruction can introduce principles and processes, but practical projects reveal how those ideas operate when deadlines, technical limitations and creative disagreements enter the picture. Nintendo therefore wants employees to gain varied experience while encountering the company’s values in their daily work. A developer may learn flexibility when a promising feature cannot run as intended on the target hardware. A designer may encounter sincerity when responding to feedback that exposes a genuine usability problem. Originality may emerge when a familiar concept is reconsidered from an unexpected angle. These lessons are difficult to reproduce through theory alone. By giving employees opportunities to take on challenges, Nintendo believes it can strengthen their skills and encourage personal growth. Failure is not necessarily the villain in that story. Sometimes it is the slightly rude teacher who arrives without an invitation but leaves behind a valuable lesson.

Teamwork Helps Knowledge Travel Across Generations

Nintendo’s approach does not place the entire burden of development on individual talent. Furukawa said the company values cooperation with senior colleagues, supervisors and other team members, recognising that entertainment projects are built through many overlapping contributions. This collaborative structure allows knowledge to travel between employees with different levels of experience. A veteran developer may understand why an apparently sensible idea caused problems on an earlier project, while a recent hire may bring technical knowledge or a perspective that challenges an old assumption. Both contributions matter. When these conversations happen openly, the company’s working philosophy can be passed on without turning it into a rigid collection of rules. Teamwork also gives employees opportunities to observe how experienced colleagues make decisions, handle setbacks and refine ideas. That kind of learning often happens quietly during ordinary meetings and reviews, but its influence can be enormous. Culture is frequently taught through behaviour long before anyone gives it a formal name.

Shigeru Miyamoto Supports Annual New Employee Training

One of the most notable details in Furukawa’s response concerns Shigeru Miyamoto. Nintendo intends to continue having the Executive Fellow participate in new employee training each year, allowing incoming staff to hear directly from a creator closely associated with some of the company’s most influential work. Miyamoto’s involvement does not mean every new employee is expected to imitate his ideas or design methods. That would hardly support originality, would it? His value lies in the experience he can share about questioning assumptions, communicating ideas and considering how players will interact with entertainment. New employees can hear the reasoning behind Nintendo’s long-standing creative priorities from someone who helped shape them over several decades. His participation also sends a clear internal message: employee training is important enough to involve one of the company’s most senior creative figures. Nintendo is not treating cultural continuity as an administrative checkbox. It is connecting new talent with the people who helped establish its creative language.

Nintendo Is Strengthening Multiple Development Areas

The company’s workforce growth is focused on more than producing a greater number of games. Furukawa specifically referred to strengthening development capabilities in hardware, software and the system software that supports Nintendo hardware. Those areas are increasingly intertwined. A console feature may require coordination between engineers designing the device, programmers building its operating environment and software teams deciding how it can improve the player’s experience. Expanding all three fields can give Nintendo greater control over how its products work together. It can also make cultural alignment more difficult because employees across these disciplines approach problems from very different angles. Hardware engineers may think in terms of reliability, manufacturing and physical constraints, while game designers are often focused on interaction, pacing and enjoyment. Nintendo’s emphasis on shared values can provide common ground between those perspectives. The goal is not to make every department think identically, but to help different specialists move towards entertainment that still feels recognisably Nintendo.

Frontline Staff and Management Share Responsibility

Furukawa noted that Nintendo is pursuing efforts from both the frontline and management sides to ensure its DNA is consistently passed on. That distinction matters because company culture cannot survive through executive speeches alone. Managers can establish priorities, create training opportunities and encourage collaboration, but employees working directly on projects determine how those principles appear in practice. Frontline teams are where abstract values meet real choices. Should a feature be simplified because players find it confusing? Is a technically impressive mechanic genuinely enjoyable? Does a project need more time, or is the team polishing something that no longer supports the central idea? Management can shape the environment in which these questions are answered, while development teams supply the judgement and discussion required to answer them well. Nintendo’s approach therefore depends on responsibility moving in both directions. Leaders must support the culture, and employees must actively express it through their daily decisions rather than waiting for instructions from above.

Protecting Nintendo DNA Does Not Mean Avoiding Change

The phrase “preserving Nintendo DNA” might sound like an attempt to keep everything exactly as it was, but flexibility is one of the three values at its centre. Nintendo’s own definition acknowledges that decisions must change when conditions and the business environment change. Preserving the company’s identity therefore does not require repeating old ideas, production methods or product strategies forever. In fact, doing so would conflict with the principles Nintendo says it values. The challenge is to remain recognisable while adapting, much like a musician experimenting with unfamiliar instruments without losing their distinctive sense of melody. New employees can be valuable precisely because they introduce knowledge and viewpoints that were not already present. Nintendo’s task is to connect those perspectives with an established commitment to original entertainment, adaptable thinking and sincere relationships with consumers. Cultural continuity works best when it provides direction without becoming a cage. Otherwise, nostalgia can quietly turn into creative furniture that nobody is willing to move.

What Nintendo’s Strategy Could Mean for Future Games

Nintendo’s explanation does not reveal a specific game, hardware feature or development schedule, but it does offer useful insight into how the company wants future projects to take shape. Greater staffing can support more technically ambitious entertainment, stronger platform services and closer coordination across hardware and software teams. At the same time, structured training and cooperation with experienced employees may help new staff understand why Nintendo sometimes makes choices that differ from broader industry habits. Players may ultimately see the results through unusual control ideas, approachable design, distinctive visual concepts or features that connect hardware and software in unexpected ways. There is no formula that guarantees creativity, and even Nintendo cannot place originality on a conveyor belt. What it can do is create an environment where employees are encouraged to challenge assumptions, learn from one another and keep the player’s experience at the centre of their decisions. Furukawa’s comments suggest that this environment remains a priority as the organisation becomes larger.

Conclusion

Nintendo’s workforce expansion presents both an opportunity and a responsibility. Additional employees can strengthen hardware, software and system software development, but the company must also ensure that its distinctive working philosophy does not become diluted as teams grow. Furukawa believes daily experience, varied challenges and cooperation with colleagues are central to that process. Nintendo’s values of originality, flexibility and sincerity are meant to be encountered through actual work rather than memorised as corporate vocabulary. Miyamoto’s annual participation in new employee training adds a direct connection between incoming talent and one of Nintendo’s most experienced creators. Meanwhile, initiatives from frontline teams and management are intended to reinforce the same principles throughout the organisation. Nintendo is not trying to preserve its identity by freezing itself in place. It wants to give a growing workforce the tools and context needed to create unfamiliar forms of entertainment while retaining the qualities that make those experiences feel unmistakably Nintendo.

FAQs
  • What does Nintendo mean by Nintendo DNA?
    • Nintendo defines its DNA through originality, flexibility and sincerity. These values shape how employees approach new entertainment, adapt to changing circumstances and build trust through their work.
  • Why is Nintendo increasing its number of employees?
    • Nintendo and its subsidiaries are expanding their workforces mainly to strengthen development capabilities related to hardware, software and the system software supporting Nintendo hardware.
  • How does Nintendo pass its values to new employees?
    • The company relies on practical work experience, varied professional challenges, teamwork and cooperation with senior colleagues, supervisors and other employees. It also uses initiatives organised by frontline teams and management.
  • Does Shigeru Miyamoto train new Nintendo employees?
    • Shuntaro Furukawa said Nintendo values having Executive Fellow Shigeru Miyamoto participate in new employee training each year as part of its efforts to keep creating unique entertainment.
  • Will Nintendo’s growth change the company’s creative identity?
    • Nintendo intends to prevent its identity from being diluted by exposing employees to its core values during their everyday work. Its emphasis on flexibility also means new ideas and changing methods can coexist with its established philosophy.
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