Nintendo: details and quotes about Tatsumi Kimishima

Yesterday, Nintendo finally revealed the name of his new president: Tatsumi Kimishima, who used to be president of Nintendo of America from 2002 to 2006. Unsurprisinly, this announcement made quite a lot of noise in the press yesterday, and that includes the Nikkei which ran several interviews/articles about Nintendo’s new president.

The first thing we learned is that Tatsumi Kimishima doesn’t plan to make any change to the basic strategy set up by his predecessor, Satoru Iwata. In other words, nothing will change regarding the mobile plans, or the strategy regarding the use of Nintendo’s IPs.

He indentified two challenges specifically:

• identifying new projects, new businesses;
• cultivating the right human ressources to reach “Nintendo-like profits”;

However, he explained in another interview that Satoru Iwata didn’t leave him any instructions on how to run the company. All he knows is that he has been elected for one year, and what will come next is a mystery. Considering Tatsumi Kimishima is over 65 years old, it would not be too surprising to see him replaced within the next couple of years, after the gen transition is over.

Tatsumi Kimishima also said that he was not opposed to someone from outside Nintendo becoming president one day, which would not be unprecedented: after all, Satoru Iwata was not originally from Nintendo. As for Genyo Takeda (Technology Fellow), explained that the aim of the Directors was now to establish a “future-proof group leadership” system inside Nintendo.

In another article, Nikkei describes Tatsumi Kimishima as a “soft and friendly” individual. From the very beginning, he expected the Wii U to fail: he actually warned that the console was too similar to the original Wii.

Unlike Satoru Iwata, Tatsumi Kimishima has a purely business-oriented background. That being said, he did say that running a company based on numbers alone wasn’t a good idea. But it’s not because of the business-oriented background that he was not Satoru Iwata’s favorite choice (according to Nikkei). Apparently, Nintendo first tried to look for someone younger, but they were not able to find anyone suitable.

Source: Nikkei
Via: Serkan Toto