What are the Nintendo IRD team doing now?

[parrothead1983]

I've been wondering about this for a quite long period of time, until I came across the 8th post in this thread at another forum:

www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=257214

It seems that as soon as Nintendo IRD quit their business, most of the team either retired or decided to do something else, either with Nintendo or another company.

[Coralcola]

The one post where the guy brings up G-13 and ST hit the nail on the head, proverbially, with how I feel with a lot of things, even though he's with me in that he'd like to see both revived.

Of the two, I'd even be forced to say, G-13 has the most potential for getting a game released also (though it might be Japan exclusive) because of the fact the new anime was just released (though it's stopped at 50 episodes now and I dunno if more are planned), and tie-ins are easily possible. The manga is also one of the longest running in Japan (something ungodly like 40 years) and he's become sort of an icon in the industry over there. He has name and brand recognition AND association in Japan, none of which he has so much here, even though I'm surprised by how many people I find here who have heard of him.

Most of the people on the ST team are retired or no longer with Nintendo, and the cost/time effectiveness of regunning a new series vs. starting from scratch isn't high.

/Doesn't mean I've given up hope. If Punch-Out, ABaHB, and others can come back, friggin ST can...

[parrothead1983]

According to FryGuy64, founder and owner of Nintendo Database (who also has a profile here at the C-Island):

Nintendo IRD always had an integral role in producing hardware, and I believe the team is still working to this end in some capacity.

Genyo Takeda was able to produce games because he had an unusual interest in America and the American market. Obviously, back in the old days it was easier to make games, and many teams struggled to move into 3D (including Intelligent Systems and R&D1). I expect IRD was among them.

Genyo Takeda is now General Hardware Manager, and was key in moving Nintendo away from boosting the graphics and not providing new experiences. So his team has been key to the direction of the DS and the Wii! And he's been working towards this end (with success it seems) since 2002.

So that's what IRD is doing.

Source

This might be true, but I read on Wikipedia that the team is now defunct, but there is no reliable citation attached to it, and Genyo Takeda is the only one mentioned that is currently working on Nintendo's hardware.