Nintendo Names Tatsumi Kimishima As New President 46
RogueyWon writes: Following the death of Satoru Iwata in July, Nintendo has announced the appointment of Tatsumi Kimishima as its new president. The 65-year-old Mr. Kimishima has been serving as Nintendo's human resources director (PDF), following a previous stint as the CEO of Nintendo of America and earlier work on the management of the Pokémon franchise. Kimishima takes up post at a time of considerable change for Nintendo, with the company beginning a tentative step into the mobile games market and preparing for the launch of a new console, codenamed "NX", in 2016.
An HR guy as President? (Score:2)
It might be my American sensibilities at work here, but does anyone else feel a little leery at that prospect?
That having been said, if he, like his predecessor, thinks of himself as a gamer, then I guess the HR concern has no bearing in reality.
japan is different (Score:1)
japan is different they have lifetime employment and chasing-out rooms
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It's fairly rare for an HR director to step up to CEO level. In a lot of companies, the HR director isn't even on the board.
I'm only guessing here, really, but it looks as though he was more or less just filling time as HR director, possibly while being groomed as a potential successor. Even though nobody saw Iwata's death coming, there was speculation that another year of poor results could have led to calls for him to stand down, so I'm sure there was succession planning going on.
His time as the head of N
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he was more or less just filling time as HR director, possibly while being groomed as a potential successor.
Given that Kimishima is already 65, I wouldn't be surprised if he's only president long enough for someone else to finish being groomed. I doubt Kimishima was ever groomed himself for the job; I think he was just experienced and available after Iwata's sudden death.
Or he's a hatchet guy (Score:2)
he was more or less just filling time as HR director, possibly while being groomed as a potential successor.
Given that Kimishima is already 65, I wouldn't be surprised if he's only president long enough for someone else to finish being groomed. I doubt Kimishima was ever groomed himself for the job; I think he was just experienced and available after Iwata's sudden death.
This makes a lot of sense in a stable company. That or he's like Ellen Pao @ reddit (or Leo Apotheker @ HP) CEO who just ended up as a hatchet wielder. Given that Nintendo has been in revenue bind recently, it might just happen that the new interim CEO could make dramatic, unpopular changes that affect the workforce and direction with the company.
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They prefer to use Katanas not hatchets in Japan.
65 years old (Score:2)
That's around the age when I hope to retire.
Of course I'll probably be screwed out of that, but still.. It's amazing to see someone taking a job with that much stress and responsibility at that age. When I get there I'll be thinking "I've given enough to society. Time to get mine" and find somewhere pretty to relax.
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This is exactly why I'm saving towards retirement, and why I don't plan to count on any government assistance.
I plan to live on my savings, and anything I get from the gov. will be a bonus.
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Re:He won't last long (Score:4, Funny)
Re:He won't last long (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm 43 and I wouldn't even want the job. Yes I've been a gamer since the early days (Intellivision) but seeing the crap being sold as games these days, plus the social media shit on top of it all - I can't understand the appeal of it all. I mean, you want to Tweet your fucking achievements? In my days, the only achievement you had was being able to finish a game, which was pretty hard for most games. These days you have infinite lives, infinite retries, time rewinding, etc. You shouldn't even be proud to finish the damn game at all.
The only way I'd accept the job would be if it were for a sub-division within the company which only targets older gamers who want "classic/retro" games.
Now get off my virtual lawn!
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The only way I'd accept the job would be if it were for a sub-division within the company which only targets older gamers who want "classic/retro" games.
Really though, Nintendo mainly builds remakes of classic/retro games. So if you're going to work for a gaming company, that might be the one.
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Re: He won't last long (Score:2)
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Yes I've been a gamer since the early days (Intellivision) but seeing the crap being sold as games these days, plus the social media shit on top of it all - I can't understand the appeal of it all. I mean, you want toÂTweetÂyour fuckingÂachievements? In my days, the only achievement you had was being able to finish a game, which was pretty hard for most games. These days you have infinite lives, infinite retries, time rewinding, etc. You shouldn't even be proud to finish the damn game at all.
Listen up whipper snapper, in my day do you know what happened when you "finished" a game? Mostly you died. There was no finish. It simply got to the point where too many things happened too fast for damn near anyone to deal with, or it simply wore you down until you made a mistake. Eventually games came along with a set number of levels. Do you know what happened when you got through them all? You got to start over at level one again, except it was much harder the second time through. If you were reall
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"I promise to not change anything," he said (Score:1)
"I hereby promise to manage forever as if it were still the late 80's and early 90's, stubbornly refusing to adopt any new innovations or technologies. I also promise to stay at least a generation or two behind every other console maker and to rely exclusively on our own Nintendo IP to float the company forever. I will valiantly dedicate myself to the pathetic-90's-kids-who-refuse-to-grow-up and weird-japanese-men-who-buy-used-panties-from-vending-machines who are our most dedicated customers."
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Isn't that Capcom, SEGA and Konami? With their no games and Pachinko tables?
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Well, its a pretty Japan thing.
Its also why none of their consoles shipped with SCART for the default video out in Europa, from Super Nintendo to Wii.
That said, it looks like Nintendo of America is the biggest old war tent solider, since they refuse to go full localization mode, when they don't produce games themselves.
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Nah, I just checked and they still seem to be doing it for hardware, at least. The release gaps between Japan and the West on the New 3DS were several months.
That's a stark contrast with Sony's strategy. Despite being a Japanese company, they released the PS4 in the US and Europe months before the Japanese release. They could see that the Japanese home-console market isn't really worth a gnat's fart these days.
Funny, really, when MS launched the Xbox 360, they threw a huge amount of effort into breaking int
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It still cracks me up that Nintendo still follows their same old nationalistic/xenophobic practice of releasing their games first in Japan, and only then to the rest of the world (often months or even years later). They didn't get the memo from about 15 years ago that the Japanese market is inconsequential now compared to the rest of the world. They're like the old soldier in the nursing home who doesn't know that we lost the war--because no one has to heart to tell him.
Many Japanese companies still work like this. Often, the rest of the world doesn't even get a release. For example about half of the Monster Hunter games (from Capcom) don't make it outside Japan, and it is a huge franchise.
The good thing however is that the exported games that are released months later may end up better than the Japanese original.
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The late 80s and early 90s are Nintendo's comfort zone. They absolutely dominated the console gaming scene at the time. Then they made the decision to jerk the industry around with the N64's specs (opting for cartridges over a CD drive at a late stage in the process) and handed most of the third party developer ecosystem, and with them market share dominance, to Sony.
Funny, really, how every time it looks like a console manufacturer might have the console wars "won", they go and shoot themselves in the coll
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Sony had the competition on the ropes in the PS2 cycle, but then went for a PS3 design which was over-priced and hard to develop for, allowing Microsoft to leap-frog them.
Haha "on the ropes"
Sure, the PS2 outsold the Xbox. But the Xbox exceeded all expectations and actually sold quite well. It didn't make money, but it did get Microsoft's foot in the door. And you're only telling half the story. The PS2 also had an overly complex design, and to the extent that Microsoft was successful with the Xbox, much of that success can be attributed to the ease of development for the original Xbox platform. That's what makes it so puzzling that Sony would try a wacky architecture again w
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To an extent, yes, but...
The PS2 managed something like 4 times the Xbox's installed base. Had Sony managed to replicate that kind of ratio in the PS3/360 generation, I suspect MS would have given up and gone home. Certainly, things were poor enough for MS in the PS2/Xbox generation that smaller third party developers often went PS2-exclusive even though they didn't have an exclusivity agreement with Sony; it just wasn't worth the costs of pointing to the Xbox or Gamecube.
And yes, the PS2 was slightly more
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A simpler, cheaper PS3, without the (in retrospect reckless) gamble on Cell architecture might have resulted in a console generation that played out very differently.
I don't think it even had to be cheaper. I think if they had just spent their money on more commodity chips instead of something so hilariously special, today in gaming it would be "Microsoft who?"
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It's funny to read comments here that seemingly imply the PS3 was a failure, since in the end the PS3 slightly outsold the XBox 360 [vgchartz.com].
It's also worthwhile to remind people, once again, that the Wii outsold both by a healthy margin.
Now if we're using the PS2 as the benchmark... then everything else made by anyone, ever, was a failure. But expecting anyone (including Sony) to somehow replicate that success story is a tad unrealistic.
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Now if we're using the PS2 as the benchmark... then everything else made by anyone, ever, was a failure. But expecting anyone (including Sony) to somehow replicate that success story is a tad unrealistic.
While I doubt PS4 will sell more than PS2, during its lifetime, it did sell more than PS2 during the first year [techradar.com].
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I wasn't implying that the PS3 was a failure. But it wasn't as big a success as it could have been. As console wars go, the seventh generation was a damned close run thing (as demonstrated by your link), and it was much more complicated than the numbers imply.
The Wii "won" the start of the cycle, with a massive sales lead at the 2-year point. But it ran out of steam in the late cycle and Nintendo fell to its first annual losses in the company's history during the closing years of the cycle. Its later years
Right Choice (Score:3)
At the very end of the document: (Score:2)
An individualselected from among the Representative Directors who has advanced knowledge and extensive experience, and holds the role of providing advice and guidance regarding organizational operations in a specialized area (newly established on September 16, 2015)
I'm posting on September 14, 2015