Shuntaro Furukawa officially replaces Tatsumi Kimishima as Nintendo’s next president

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A few months ago, Tatsumi Kimishima announced that he would be stepping down as president of Nintendo. He had also named Shuntaro Furukawa as his successor.

During the company’s 78th Annual General Meeting of Shareholders today, Furukawa was officially named Nintendo’s new president. The following comments from both Furukawa and Kimishima:

Kimishima

“I was appointed president due to the sudden passing of our former president, but due to the support of a great deal of good people – including shareholders – the Switch was released without a hitch. I don’t think I could retire at a better time. Thank you very much.”

Furukawa

“I will now be taking office as president and will serve as such at all future Board of Directors meetings. As a company, we will continue to change with the times, but no matter what we will continue to be a company that incorporates flexibility and ingenuity into the entertainment we produce – and continue to be devoted to making people smile.”

Oh No!. The ship is going down.

dooomed doooomed i tells ya

More mobile shit.

And no foreigner is able to spot the difference!

(those folk all look the same to us!)

“I will now be taking office as president and will serve as such at all future Board of Directors meetings. As a company, we will continue to change with the times, but no matter what we will continue to be a company that incorporates flexibility and ingenuity into the entertainment we produce – and continue to be devoted to making people smile.”

The underlined is simply golden. The sad part is, Nintendo probably genuinely believes it to be true.

Kimishima is old enough to retire. Makes sense he would pass it onto someone younger.

@MirkoS77: Strangely enough, you can't really accuse Nintendo of just doing the same thing over and over again.

The last 'safe' device they released was...what, the GBA? They're frequently rebooting and overhauling their franchises as well, and they've adopted mobile gaming fairly successfully. So they're arguably more adaptive to the times than...say, Sony, who just releases "the same, but slightly more powerful" over and over.*

*Hardware and software-wise, anyway. They're missing a couple of modern online features, but that's a minor nitpick.

I know absolutely nothing about that guy. Kimishima was around in the GameCube era, so I kinda liked the fact that he was pres, but oh well.

Hope to god not. Any signs of this new guy wanting to pursue that or something?

What an odd random racist comment.

Really...

I'm concerned about his drive towards mobile... But who knows maybe they'll get it right and maybe it won't hurt the console side.

@Litchie Yes.

Furukawa — who will replace retiring president Tatsumi Kimishima — said that he expects mobile games to “expand the most” when compared to the company’s other divisions, and that Nintendo believes it can bring in around $910 million. It’s an enormous figure, but it isn’t unreasonable when looking at the data. Fire Emblem Heroes, which is free to play but features fairly extensive microtransaction options, made nearly $300 million in its first year. This is compared to the roughly $60 million of profit Nintendo saw with Super Mario Run, which used a one-time fee model to give players the full list of stages.

“The idea that something will emerge that transforms into something big, in the same manner as game consoles, is the defining motive of the Nintendo business,” Furukawa said in the interview, though he stressed that the company didn’t expect any of its games to become a hit on the scale of Pokémon Go. - digitaltrends.com

It sounds like he's not stupid but it's also a little concerning because mobile games have such low standards. And Nintendo's attempt to raise those standards was basically beaten down by mobile gamers. Seriously mobile gamers have zero standards and I guess we see what becomes of an industry when gamers are 'not entitled'.

****

If Super Mario Run launched at $1 it would have made over $1 Billion dollars and been more successful than angry birds.

Nintendo is so insanely stupid that they would charge $10 and only make $60 Million.

It is the biggest mistake they have made in years.

Bye bye :)

MNGA

LOL

Nintendoomed.

Nope, the real mistake is going to mobile period.

Not as bad as EA making C&C Mobile. I'm sorry but EA has done far worse then Nintendo when it comes to Mobile.

Hoping to see some dramatic change in their products and business; actual consoles, a more open development platform, and so forth.

So? Doesn't stop the fact that Nintendo is still doing bad in the mobile arena. And with this new guy wanting to focus more on mobile, well advocates of Nintendo going third party should love him.

@nintendoboy16: lol Pokemon is the best mobile game so no just no

Aren't you taking this too seriously? No one's not gonna focus only Mobile games, Nintendo will still make console games exclusive first & foremost. As long as Nintendo has two division one for mobile & the other for game consoles, I have no problem with that.

Nope. Pokemon Go and Fire Emblem Heroes are big hits on mobile.

I actually agree. I remember talking to my hair stylist about why X nail salon was doing better than Y nail salon by a long shot. She said it was because X salon was cheaper. X salon charged $20 for a mani pedi while Y salon charged $40. Three people go into X salon while only one person would go into Y salon. At that point, X salon made $60 while Y salon only made $40 in that same time period.

The thing that Y salon and Nintendo had in common was arrogance. They thought that since they were 'better' than the competition, that they would command more money for the same service. At a certain point though, you have to let pride go and make more money. 150 million people downloaded the game initially. If they had charged $1, then that would have been $150 million. Hell probably more, like Pokemon Go levels.

So everything is going to stay the same?

Boring...

Eh, I don't mind NIntendo getting into the mobile market as long as long as It doesn't hurt their console/core software side of things, which so far hasn't really been the case.

Interested to see how this new president does things.

Time will tell if this is a good or bad thing. I'll be optimistic until shown otherwise. Loving the Switch and the games

Sometimes Nintendo are indeed really fucking stupid.

I've seen many opportunities for Nintendo to earn more money than they can store, but they just chose not to. I'll never understand what the hell is going on in their HQ.. It's just the japanese pride getting in the way of earning money or something? It's weird, that's for sure.

Nintendo is earning a ton of money from Fire Emblem Heroes, along with a share of the Pokemon Go money. Nintendo's mobile strategy has been a success so far.

Mario Run was a mis-step, because they tried to introduce a console-style premium model to a F2P-dominated mobile market. And so Nintendo went back to F2P with Fire Emblem Heroes.

Pokemon Go - A game struggling for relevancy more than freaking Skyrim and WoW!

The problem was arrogance like me and @Litchie pointed out. I think they thought that since that Mario is a way better game than 'mobile trash' and a well known figure, that they could charge $10 for it. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. They should have just charged $.99 for it and called it a day.

I think AAA third party companies, the ones who charged console premium prices, struggled as well.

All I know is, whoever thought of Nintendo LABO needs to step down

Recent stats of Pokemon Go:

• 147 million monthly active players (May 2018)
• $104 million monthly revenue (May 2018)
• $1 billion annual revenue (2017)

Pokemon Go has a larger monthly active player base than Minecraft (74M) and Fortnite (40M) combined.

If they went with your suggestion, then Mario Run would've made a lot less money. There's nothing wrong with the price ($10 is an ideal price point), but with the revenue model. The traditional sales/premium model they use for console games simply doesn't work for mobile games.

The way to go in mobile gaming is F2P. That's the only model that can generate huge profits in mobile gaming. Nintendo learnt their lesson with Mario Run, and made sure to go F2P with Fire Emblem Heroes, which is now raking in lots of cash for Nintendo. If they made a Mario F2P mobile game, then it has the potential to pull in Pokemon Go levels of revenue.

Now if they could just get rid of Reggie Fils-Aime. I'm getting tired of that guy's mug.