Originally known as R&D4, Nintendo EAD is Nintendo's most celebrated development team. Lead by Shigeru Miyamoto, it is currently Nintendo's largest development team. EAD stands for Entertainment Analysis and Development.
History
R&D4
R&D4 was founded in 1984. The president of Nintendo, impressed with the success of Shigeru Miyamoto's games, decided to give Miyamoto his own development team. It was the smallest development team, but they created some of the NES's most memorable games: the Mario and The Legend of Zelda series.
EAD
In 1989, the president of Nintendo decided to restructure the company. Most of the software developers from R&D2 and R&D3 were transferred to the newly renamed Nintendo EAD. They were told to focus on developing games for the Super Nintendo. They continued with the popular Mario and Zelda franchises, while creating new ones including Star Fox and F-Zero. Though they didn't make as many Gameboy games as R&D1, they made a few, most notably The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening.
During the Nintendo 64 era, EAD continued to create new games in their popular franchises. In addition, they began a few new franchises. Wave Race 64 and 1080 Snowboarding were popular. They supported the Pokemon franchise with Pokemon Stadium. However, the most significant new franchise was Animal Forest, a life simulator.
With the Gamecube came new games. Nintendo EAD continued to create games for it's two key franchises: Mario and Zelda. However, the majority of it's franchises were taken over by other groups. They brought over a new version of the Japanese Animal Forest to America under the name Animal Crossing. They also began a new series with Pikmin
New Structure
In 2005, Satoru Iwata decided to merge all of Nintendo's internal software developers into one group. R&D1, R&D2, and Nintendo Special Planning & Development were all merged with EAD. However, because of the size of the group, they have been divided into smaller Software Development groups. Under this new system, Miyamoto has control over all of Nintendo's internal game development. It's currently unknown how many Software Development Groups there are, but there is information about at least six different groups.
Software Development Groups
Games