Kimishima elected for one year, open to an outsider running Nintendo

Nintendo’s new president Tatsumi Kimishima has been speaking to the press since being appointed president of Nintendo, assuming the spot left empty by Satoru Iwata’s untimely passing. In a recent interview with Nikkei, he was asked some tough questions about assuming the role of managing one of the biggest video game companies in the history of the industry.

Perhaps one of the biggest concerns that gamers and critics alike have after the appointment is whether or not Kimishima will continue down the path that Iwata set, given the two have vastly different backgrounds. In a recent interview with Nikkei that was translated in a series of tweets, we have a better idea of what Kimishima plans to do with his one year at Nintendo.

First and foremost, Kimishima admitted that Iwata left no instructions for how to run the company. Kimishima himself has been elected for one year and he’s stated that he’s open to company outsiders leading Nintendo one day.

Before Iwata’s passing, the biggest announcement from the Japanese company is its partnership with DeNA to create mobile infrastructure for Nintendo-developed games. Kimishima says these plans won’t be changing and that Nintendo will be creating new business opportunities within the mobile sphere.

Another interesting aspect of the Nikkei interview is that Kimishima predicted the Wii U would fail as it is too similar to the Wii. For fans and critics who have been calling the Wii U a poor decision since it was first announced, this may lead some to rally to Kimishima’s side.

But perhaps the greatest pull from The Nikkei interview is that Kimishima says that it’s wrong to lead a company based on numbers alone. Given his financial background, many fear that Kimishima will get caught up in performance reports and profitability, rather than producing something that’s fun to play and share with others.

Despite all this, Kimishima seems to know that Nintendo is in dire straights. He admits in the interview that the troika of himself, Miyamoto, and Takeda leading the company in administrative, software, and hardware respectively was a hasty decision, but one that was needed given that the holiday season is fast approaching and the bulk of Nintendo’s sales are often made during this period.

What do you think of some of the information from this translated interview?