"Miyamoto also says that when a problem just can't be solved no matter what, someone is lying."
- Satoru Iwata on Shigeru Miyamoto's way of looking at things
That quote above comes from a new interview with Nintendo president and CEO Satoru Iwata, who puts it into this context: "He doesn't mean 'lying' in a bad way, but that the person's thought-process is mistaken, or they're looking at the problem the wrong way.
"Miyamoto is like, how do I put this, he's a genius at creating perception changes. Explaining the value of changing one's perception in an easily understood manner makes people happy, so it's a very interesting skill (laughs)."
Japanese site 4Gamer.net recently posted the interview with Iwata, and some enterprising NeoGAF users have been translating it into English. While the translation is incomplete and sometimes lacks clarity, the insight into Iwata's thinking and Nintendo's game development culture and history is entertaining and informative.
For example, at one point, Iwata says, "back when I was just starting out, I sort of arbitrarily decided that Miyamoto was my rival, though that's embarrassing to admit now."
He also speaks of his last professional game programming gig -- an emergency debug session on Super Smash Bros. Melee for the GameCube, after he'd already moved into management at Nintendo. On the flipside, he talks about his first efforts of programming, too -- on a Hewlett-Packard calculator in the 1970s.
But most compelling is Iwata's talk of the "Miyamoto Methodology," which he wants to preserve ("I feel like it would be useful to the game industry if you could put it into words," Iwata says.) The above quotes are just a small part of that.
The post on NeoGAF that contains the full translation efforts of the forum's posters is well worth a read.