After only three years of being the president of Nintendo, Tatsumi Kimishima will step down for someone else to take his place. Kimishima was originally appointed the president of the company when its previous president of 14 years, the late Satoru Iwata, passed away in 2015. The new president’s name is Shuntaro Furukawa.
Furukawa is 46 years old, which means that he’s more than two decades younger than his predecessor, Kimishima. Despite that, he’s actually been working at Nintendo since 1994, where he started his career at the company in global marketing and served on the board of the Pokemon Company.
It certainly feels like the younger generation is taking over the management of the company, as three other senior managers will be replaced by younger executives. Some of these are prominent employees of Nintendo, including Yoshiaki Koizumi, who was a key architect of the Nintendo Switch, and Takashi Tezuka, who contributed to Super Mario Odyssey.
At a news conference in Osaka recently, Furukawa said: “We will develop the company to its fullest. I will balance Nintendo’s traditions: originality and flexibility.” He will be officially appointed as the new sixth president and CEO of Nintendo in June.
Nintendo’s financial forecast estimates this fiscal year to achieve a profit of 225 billion yen or approximately $2.1 billion. That would be the best profits for the company in over eight years. The operating profit for the latest quarter was 21.1 billion yen, which exceeded the average projection of analysts for 20.2 billion yen. Yearly revenue from mobile games also increased by a whopping 62 percent to 39.3 billion yen.
Speaking to Bloomberg, Furukawa said: “I grew up playing the Famicom and come from that generation. Now as a member of management with Super Mario’s creator Shigeru Miyamoto, I have a lot of respect for him. On the other hand, with this new job that can’t just be it, so I expect to say what needs to be said to run the company.”
It looks like the Japanese gaming giant will be in promising hands in the immediate future. The company’s financial earnings report also revealed the latest hardware and software sales, with Nintendo Switch sales reaching more than 17 million units.
