Who Really Made Nintendo’s Games: How EAD Was Organized

EAD Was Not a Separate Studio

EAD stood for Entertainment Analysis & Development.

It was an internal division of Nintendo itself. It was not a subsidiary like Retro Studios or Monolith Soft, and it was not an independent studio with its own office, management, and budget. EAD employees worked inside Nintendo, and the boxes for their games usually carried only the publisher's name.

In the early 2010s, another major division operated alongside it: Software Planning & Development, or SPD. The boundary between the two was not based on genres or game series.

EAD mainly handled projects developed by Nintendo's own staff. SPD more often coordinated games created with external teams such as Intelligent Systems, HAL Laboratory, Game Freak, and other partners.

The division was never completely strict, however. EAD also brought in outside developers, and employees from different divisions could help one another. Nintendo generally avoided turning its internal departments into isolated kingdoms.

That is why the word “studio” can be misleading here. EAD did not have one team of hundreds of people moving together from Zelda to Mario and then to Wii Sports. The division was split into several production groups, each built around an experienced producer and a small permanent core.

Five Groups in Kyoto

Most of EAD was based in Kyoto. By the early 2010s, five production groups worked there.

Nintendo never published a detailed organizational chart for the division, so the picture we have comes from game credits, interviews, and scattered comments from developers. The groups also changed constantly: employees moved between them, managers received new projects, and teams expanded and contracted again.

It is therefore better to view this layout not as five permanently fixed studios, but as a snapshot of EAD around 2011–2012.

Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka at a Nintendo meeting during E3 2004. This was when Miyamoto discussed the restructuring of Nintendo's development divisions and the move toward a clearer producer-based system.
Kenji Saeki / 任天堂合同記者会見でNDSとGC「ゼルダの伝説」に新事実 / impress.co.jp

The first group was associated with Hideki Konno. It mainly oversaw Mario Kart and Nintendogs. Konno could serve as producer on several games at once, but that did not mean the exact same full team made both a racing game and a puppy simulator.

The second group was led by Katsuya Eguchi. It handled Animal Crossing, Wii Sports, Wii Play, and Wii Music. At first glance, these games have little in common, but all of them targeted a broad audience and were built around simple ideas that were easy to explain.

The third group worked on The Legend of Zelda. Its main producer was Eiji Aonuma. This part of EAD is the easiest to mistake for a separate “Zelda team,” although its staff still changed from one game to another.

The fourth group, led by Hiroyuki Kimura, worked on 2D Mario games and some Pikmin projects.

The fifth group was associated with Tadashi Sugiyama. It handled Wii Fit, Steel Diver, and several co-developed projects, including the Nintendo 3DS remake of Star Fox 64.

Each group had its own series and producers, but not necessarily a complete set of specialists. Early in development, a game might have a small team that needed designers, planners, and a few programmers. Once the project entered full production, artists, audio staff, technical specialists, and developers from other departments joined in.

In other words, a production group set the direction of a project, but it did not always create every part of the game itself.

Why Nintendo Needed an Office in Tokyo

Historically, almost all of Nintendo's internal development was concentrated in Kyoto. But in 2003, the company opened an EAD branch in Tokyo.

The reason was practical. Nintendo wanted to hire talented developers who lived in the capital and had no plans to move to Kyoto. The new office also made it possible to build another team with a slightly different culture and a fresh perspective on the company's games.

The Tokyo branch's first major project was Donkey Kong Jungle Beat for GameCube. Takao Shimizu served as producer, while Yoshiaki Koizumi directed the game. It was unusual even by Nintendo standards: players controlled the platformer with a pair of bongo-shaped controllers.

The Tokyo team later shifted to 3D Mario. It created Super Mario Galaxy, Super Mario Galaxy 2, and Super Mario 3D Land.

By the early 2010s, Tokyo had two production groups. One was associated with Takao Shimizu and the other with Yoshiaki Koizumi. As in Kyoto, these were not fully isolated studios: people moved between projects, and specialists from other parts of Nintendo joined development.

The Tokyo office was far from EAD's management, so Shigeru Miyamoto visited regularly to review projects. But his presence did not make him the director of every game. Yoshiaki Koizumi directed the first Super Mario Galaxy, Koichi Hayashida directed the second, and Takeshi Hayakawa led programming on both.

Jan Graber / Yoshiaki Koizumi and Koichi Hayashida at E3 2013 / commons.wikimedia.org

A Team That Could Grow

Imagine that Nintendo was starting work on a new Zelda game.

At first, a relatively small group would work on the prototype. It searched for the central idea, tested the controls, designed the structure of the world, and tried to decide whether the project was worth developing further. A huge team would only get in the way at this stage: while the rules of the game changed every week, dozens of artists would have nothing useful to draw.

Once the concept became clearer, the project began to grow. More planners, level designers, artists, programmers, and audio specialists joined it. Some came from EAD's shared departments, some from other Nintendo divisions, and some of the work went to outside companies.

After the game was released, the team shrank again. Some developers started the next project, while others moved to help a neighboring group.

In 2015, Satoru Iwata explicitly said that Nintendo did not use a purely studio-based or divisional model. According to him, the company worked more like a project-based organization: the right people were assembled for each specific game, and boundaries between divisions were not supposed to get in the way.

This explains some of the oddities in the credits. The same developer could work on completely different series over the course of a few years. And the size of the “Zelda team” or “Mario team” depended on the stage of the project and on who was counted as part of it.

That is why exact employee figures for EAD found in older articles should be treated carefully. Nintendo did not publish a complete staff roster, and outside estimates often mixed permanent employees, temporary contributors, and staff from partner companies.

The number of people mattered less than the basic principle. Each project had a small creative core, around which a much larger team was assembled when needed.

Sound for Every Game at Once

The sound group held a special place within EAD.

It did not belong specifically to Mario, Zelda, or Animal Crossing. Composers, sound directors, and effects specialists moved between the division's projects. This allowed Nintendo to assign experienced employees wherever they were needed most.

One of the group's leaders was Koji Kondo, the composer behind the music of Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. Over time, he wrote fewer complete soundtracks and increasingly supervised other composers, discussed musical direction, and reviewed their work.

Super Mario Galaxy is a clear example. The game's main composer was Mahito Yokota. At first, he tried to write deliberately “space-like” music, but Kondo gave one of his test pieces a score of zero: it sounded grand, but nothing like Mario. After several attempts, Yokota found the right blend of orchestral music, cosmic scale, and the familiar melodic character of the series.

Kondo did not disappear from the credits and wrote several tracks himself. But his main job was no longer to fill the entire game with music. It was to help the team stay on the right course.

The sound group was not unique in this respect. Experienced EAD employees gradually moved from hands-on production to supervising several projects. Their influence became broader, even as they appeared more often in the credits as producers, advisers, and department managers.

Vincent Diamante / Koji Kondo - GDC 2007 / commons.wikimedia.org

Who Actually Programmed Mario and Zelda

In addition to the production and sound groups, EAD had a technical branch. It worked on shared technology, development tools, and prototypes.

It was led by Takao Sawano. The group included specialists who helped teams solve technical problems, built development environments, and tested new control methods. Sawano, for example, worked on the Wii Balance Board before the device became the foundation of Wii Fit.

But even this did not mean that Nintendo programmed all of its games exclusively with its own full-time staff.

One of the company's most important partners was the Japanese developer SRD. Its programmers had contributed to Nintendo games since the early 1980s, including Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Star Fox, Animal Crossing, and many others.

The designers and project leads could work at Nintendo while a significant part of the programming was handled by SRD employees. From the player's perspective, the boundary was almost invisible. The two teams sat next to each other and worked as one for decades, even though they remained legally separate companies.

Older descriptions of EAD's structure therefore emphasized that SRD did not belong to Nintendo. That was true at the time. But in 2022, Nintendo acquired all shares of SRD and turned its long-time partner into a subsidiary.

This is a good example of why the old structure cannot simply be mapped onto the present day. Relationships once maintained through decades of cooperation between two independent companies were eventually formalized.

SRD / 社長挨拶 / srd.co.jp

What Miyamoto and Tezuka Did

Above the production groups were the leaders of the entire division.

Shigeru Miyamoto was responsible for EAD as a whole. He reviewed projects, helped choose their central ideas, discussed team composition, and made sure the division did not commit too many people and too much money at the same time.

Takashi Tezuka led software development. He also supervised several series at once and helped producers solve problems.

A shared coordination group worked alongside them. It handled budgets, staff allocation, scheduling, and early concepts. This was the level at which Nintendo decided which projects would receive full production teams, where extra help was needed, and whether people could be assigned to another experiment.

Because of this structure, Miyamoto often participated in a game's development without serving as its director. He could suggest an idea, criticize the controls, demand a new prototype, or help find a new lead. His influence was enormous, but the day-to-day work was done by the producers, directors, designers, and programmers assigned to the specific project.

The same gradual shift happened with Tezuka and Kondo. The more experienced they became, the fewer games they could make personally — and the more teams they could help at the same time.

That is why the credit “general producer” should not be read as “the person who came up with and made the entire game.” At EAD, it more often meant responsibility for the wider system in which dozens of other creators worked.

Nico Hofmann / Takashi Tezuka, Shigeru Miyamoto and Kōji Kondō / commons.wikimedia.org

Under One Roof

The flexible structure had an obvious problem: to lend people to a neighboring team, you at least had to communicate with that team regularly.

By the early 2010s, Nintendo's developers were spread across several buildings in Kyoto. They formally worked for the same company, but the distance still got in the way of chance meetings, technology sharing, and quickly bringing specialists onto a project.

In 2014, Nintendo completed a new development center next to its headquarters. Teams that had previously worked separately were brought together in one place.

Inside Nintendo's development center in Kyoto: workspaces, studios, testing rooms, and spaces for collaboration.
James Burns / Inside Nintendo / medium.com

Satoru Iwata explained that the move was meant to strengthen cooperation between divisions. EAD and SPD had once been separated not only by name but also by office location. Now it became easier for developers to assemble mixed teams and share knowledge.

Work areas inside Nintendo's development center. The new building brought together employees who had previously worked in different offices across Kyoto.
James Burns / Inside Nintendo / medium.com

The move prepared Nintendo for even larger changes. The company no longer wanted to maintain a strict boundary between EAD's “internal” games and SPD's co-developed projects. Modern game development was becoming too large, expensive, and complex for the old arrangement.

What Happened to EAD

In September 2015, Nintendo carried out a major reorganization.

EAD and SPD ceased to exist in their previous forms. They were replaced by a single division, Entertainment Planning & Development, or EPD. It was led by Shinya Takahashi, who had previously headed SPD.

Miyamoto stepped down as head of EAD and became a Creative Fellow, a senior creative advisory role. This did not mean he was leaving Nintendo: he continued working on games, characters, theme parks, and other company projects, but no longer managed a separate division.

The EAD name disappeared, but the teams were not dissolved and game development did not start over from scratch. The people, series, and accumulated experience moved into EPD. The reorganization mostly formalized the direction Nintendo had been taking for several years: internal teams and external partners were meant to work within one shared system.

So the phrase “the EAD creators of Super Mario Galaxy” still makes sense in a historical context. But EAD can no longer be described as a modern Nintendo studio — the division has not existed since 2015.

The old group numbers should not be automatically applied to the current structure either. Nintendo does not publish a detailed, up-to-date organizational chart for EPD, and familiar producers may supervise several teams while drawing staff from different departments.

What Remains of the Old EAD

Almost everything that mattered — except the name.

Shinya Takahashi remains one of Nintendo's development leaders and is part of the company's senior management today. Yoshiaki Koizumi, who once led one of EAD's Tokyo groups, became a senior executive officer and one of the main public faces presenting the company's new hardware and games.

Takashi Tezuka's story also shows how easy it is to misunderstand a title at Nintendo. In May 2026, the company announced that he would step down as an executive officer after the shareholders' meeting on June 26. News reports often described this simply as retirement.

But Tezuka clarified at the meeting that he was leaving his management position while continuing to work with Nintendo as a production producer. In other words, the man who helped create Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda is no longer part of executive management, but still supports the game development teams.

That is very typical of Nintendo. An experienced developer may stop designing levels personally, then stop managing one team day to day, and later leave an administrative position — yet still continue to influence new games.

EAD was strong not because several infallible geniuses sat together in one room. Its strength came from the way the work was organized.

Small groups preserved knowledge about Mario, Zelda, and Animal Crossing. Shared specialists moved wherever they were needed. Veterans reviewed projects and trained new leaders. Outside companies worked beside Nintendo employees for years. And each team's composition changed along with the game itself.

From the outside, the structure looked confusing. But it meant Nintendo did not have to build a separate studio for every new idea or keep hundreds of people tied to a single series.

The three letters EAD disappeared from the credits long ago. But the system behind them never went away.