This is a stupid discussion.
People invent stuff all the time, who invented the cell phone? But, but... it changed the world. Who invented the iPod? It wasn't Steve Jobs. Who invented the color TV? Hell, who invented the TV?
I rest my case.
People get to be known and recognized need to have two things going for them:
1. Keep being influential - Miyamoto is not known for having done Donkey Kong 1981 and packed up shop, no, he's influential because he's doing games until now and never dropped hugely when it comes to quality. Dude's been on a streak for 35 years, he's no fluke, and he worked damn hard for it. Like they said of James Brown Miyamoto might be the the hardest working man in the gaming business (unlike John Romero), he delves with every part of the product, software and all it's intrincacies, hardware, marketing... Nothing is really out of his turf, when it comes to gaming he's the full package, and not a lot of people can boast they're the full package, hence there are not a whole lot of Miyamotos, there can't be even if we looked outside of gaming which is why one usually says Miyamoto is like Miyazaki of Gaming, Steven Spielberg of gaming, Walt Disney of gaming. Because he really is. Those are all timeless artisans too which is my queue to say gaming is a newer form of art that suffers from inferiority complexes and is still being defined in a lot of senses, but what we have now we owe a lot to miyamoto, if game directors are recognized these days Miyamoto was the first, it wasn't even a career path before and dude's been a roadwarrior for it. Occulus rift is just hardware, and although Miyamoto also contributed to hardware several times he is not getting remembered for that, he is being remembered by emotions and feelings his products engraved into several generations of people by now.
2. They have a vision, and their vision doesn't end in one thing. Miyamoto tried and tried again lots of things over the years, if something didn't work he'd try again and again in a timely manner until it was ready or gained form, he wanted to do multiplayer on Mario 64,
he wanted to make Mii's since the NES, and lots of other examples. that's vision right there because they eventually materialized into something. John Carmack on the Occulus Rift is also one of those dudes, he's influential, but dude knows about cars, rocket science, programming shit and pretty much everything and has interests outside. He's a genius, so is Miyamoto but above all, he managed to contribute in a lot of things across the years, which if he was just a dude that can do programming he wouldn't unless he was ordered to, he's also very articulate, Miyamoto although not really an english speaker also has that trait in which he can convey his ideas very well onto words and be consistent, he has that kind of vision and clarity. It's that simple. It's not just being there.
Anyone else not known yet who can be a force to be reckoned in the future? Well, that's a bet as any other, they might just drop out of the map if their contribution comes down to being just this. Yes, they were part of the cog that made this go forward, but that doesn't give them a place in Time magazine cover.
Miyamoto is awfully closer to that than they'll probably ever be. Remember Miyamoto placed first on 2008 time magazine reader's poll for the most influential person to which he was nominated multiple times, he was knighted by the french, received a BAFTA and was awarded with a prince of the asturias award - no other gaming person gets voted for popularity on broad daylight and wins. He needs to prove nothing at this point, yet he's still here. Those dudes have nothing on him, and no I'm not gushing over a man.
Occulus rift dudes have to prove they aren't a sinking ship following Facebook acquisition and will have to withstand Sony trying their hand at it other companies that'll surely jump on that boat as soon as it's ripe like Creative, Mad Catz and Samsung, and probably Google and Apple via wearable shit. Perhaps Nintendo and Microsoft as well, this is a new Blue Ocean or at least a mirage of it, it won't get anywhere with Occulus Rift and Facebook alone. Even if sure, they were influential in getting the ball rolling.
But if it wasn't them someone would eventually, Carmack was already doing his own assembling bits and pieces exercise on parallel and lots of companies were doing R&D on it, Nintendo has had patents on this for decades, as does Sony, they didn't wake up to the possibilities now.
Remember Commodore? ceased to be influential in 2 years time. Stuff changes very quickly with technology and I reached for a gaming example, I could have said Nokia on the phone field, or Kodak on the camera business. Shit that a few years ago you'd say wouldn't go anywhere in 50 years.
Getting to be redundant is a lot easier for any dude at Occulus than it is for Miyamoto.
I have a lot of friends that are strictly Apple fans who don't know who Steve Wozniak is
Are they fans of paying a lot for stuff they know nothing about?
Not my definition of fan, that's like a fan of starwars not knowing about someone really important who participated in making the things they love a reality.
Plus even Nintendo fans known about Wozniak because dude was Nintendo Power Tetris highscore worst nightmare.
