ALL HAIL SHUNTARO FURUKAWA!

Tatsumi Kimishima is my, and your, and more importantly Nintendo's, Lord and Master.  Previous head of Nintendo of America.  I must admit, I've never heard of him before.  No mention of him as a developer: instead, he's been CFO, and worked in banking.

I have yet to be convinced.  Nonetheless, until proven otherwise, ALL HAIL KIMISHIMA!  ALL HAIL!

He does sound like more of a business guy than a games guy, but they've bumped Shigsy and Takeda up to Creative Fellow and Technical Fellow to counteract that a bit, so I'm pretty confident we're not going to see Nintendo "charge to make Mario jump higher" or anything.

Was that picture of him taken right at the time he smelt something rotten?

Yes, the smell of filthy lucre.

Drunkalilly wrote:

He does sound like more of a business guy than a games guy, but they've bumped Shigsy and Takeda up to Creative Fellow and Technical Fellow to counteract that a bit, so I'm pretty confident we're not going to see Nintendo "charge to make Mario jump higher" or anything.

Seeing that (about Shigsy and Takeda) is comforting, but I'm still worried that a more "business-focussed" CEO might, in trying to make Ninty (more) commercially successful, pander to analysts in "bad" ways. I just hope we don't see a major shift towards pay-to-win on the NX.

ALL HAIL!

I guess it makes sense putting a business man at the head of a business. I guess promoting Takeda and Miymoto to technology and creative fellow is so they can act as advisors for kimi.
I'm not really worried about analysts affecting how the company is run, with kimi's experience I'm sure he doesn't need much advice, not even from pachter.

SO HAILED!

NintendoLife likened Shigsy and Takeda to wingmen, which conjures up bizarre images of both clubs and Star Fox. I am convinced that Mr. Iwata's vision for the company will be the way of things in the short to medium term.

That's an ace .gif, NintenDUCK.

Some information about Kimishima. Interesting that he predicted the Wii U's "failure" by talking about how close it was to the original Wii. I doubt he'll have much impact on the NX, seeing as it's probably a fair way down the line, but what could this lead to in Nintendo's next console?

All hail Shuntaro Furukawa

The thread is getting a name change, methinks! EDIT: Balla beat me to it as I was typing this!

I guess with Furukawa being a younger (by comparison to Kimishima, at least) lad Nintendo is looking for a president to have an extended run with the position with Kimishima essentially filling the role of interim president in all but name. Furukawa seems like he's a fair bit of experience in the industry, at least.

I wonder how much of the Switch's success can be attributed to momentum left by whatever Iwata had put into place or what parts Kimishima had a hand in. He's definitely got the honour of chairing Nintendo during one of their most successful stints in history.

That is indeed a good shout!  I'm tentatively glad: while Kimishima seems to have done a jolly good job, it probably is time for someone new, and this little speech only endears him to me.  Well met, Furukawa-san, well met!

EDIT: Jay got me back by posting while I was typing this!

"He is fluent in English."

Ooh, that's key. Nintendo having a president to represent them globally is a great shout.

Really young, really passionate dude. I can see great things coming from this guy, with Mr Nogami and Mr Yabuki as his development superstars, for many years. Unfortunately the likes of Shigsy, Aonuma and even the sensual sexpot that is Yoshiaki Koizuma will have to retire, so I'm really glad to see this younger generation being pushed to the forefront (and absolutely killing it).

It reminds me of the NJPW Young Lion system, in a weird way. Those trainee wrestlers are learning from some of the best wrestlers ever and as such look like they're going to absolutely kill it once they complete their training. I'd imagine that the new generation of Nintendo talent have worked under some of the best producers and developers to ever do it and as such they're proving to be shit-hot themselves.