LONG BLOG
Tatsumi Kimishima - The Right President? His Impact On The Future of Nintendo
G'day guys, hope you are having a great week. As you guys would be aware already, the new President and Representative Director of Nintendo was announced, and it is none other than the former Nintendo of America President (2002-2006 = replaced by Reggie Fils-Aime) and CEO (2006-2013 - replaced by Satoru Iwata), Tatsumi Kimishima. But there is a question lingering around people's mind - is he the right man for the job?
Let's start with the fact that Kimishima was the Nintendo of America President during the years of the Nintendo GameCube (which was an important console in the era of Nintendo - 64, GCN, GameBoy (and its successors), DS), but also during that time, Nintendo was starting to struggle with making something that was new that was going to interest the fans (fans had already known that Xbox and PlayStation were not going to change their controllers from a basic DualShock/controller (PlayStation) and console. Yes, at the time, the console was "revolutionary" but was it a good console that lived up to its promises? Nope. It turned from something that was for general entertainment, into some fitness console. But, that was what was explained before where we said that the Nintendo was being asked to do something "new and innovative". But, his term as the NoA president didn't last as long as various other NoA presidents, such as Reggie Fils-Aime, whom is now the video gamer's subject to memes.
But, he was the CEO of Nintendo of America from '06 to '13, which was longer than people like Satoru Iwata, who passed away earlier this year. But is he too old for the role? Maybe. Most Nintendo Presidents would start at a younger age (take Hiroshi Yamauchi for example, one of the most revolutionary Nintendo Presidents of all time). Yamauchi even became the wealthiest person in Japan, in 2008, six years after his retirement from the presidency spot. The thing is, Kimishima is starting his role as the Nintendo President at an older age of 65, compared to people like Satoru Iwata, Hiroshi Yamauchi and others. That means, the chances that he will be a long-serving president (say twenty, thirty years) are less likely, however still possible, but we will have to wait and see about it.
As a follow-up to my post addressing Satoru Iwata's passing, I still believe that there are other people that are deserving of this spot. I can tell you that I never expected Fils-Aime, or Miyamoto to take on the role of a permanent Nintendo President, but they could have looked at Satoru Shibata or Genyo Takeda (who was even rumored to be getting the role only a month or so ago). I don't know much about the two, but I know that they are good speakers, and they would interest the fans, for however long they took on the role for. Not to say that Kimishima would not do a good job, but the option was clearly there to go for other people.
Yet, I do like the decision that they are choosing experience over age, as Kimishima has been a major part of Nintendo for a very long time, and I do commend Nintendo on giving Tatsumi the role, for that matter. I have no doubt that Kimishima will use his experience to drive Nintendo forward into the future, and possibly even bring Nintendo back into the winner's circle, and be a more competitive force compared to Sony and Microsoft, like they were in the 90s and early to mid 2000s. After shifting from being a Nintendo fan to a Sony fan after nearly 10 years in 2012, I hope that this change of leadership will bring myself as well as other former Nintendo fans back to where they belong, and I have the belief that they can do it, possibly with the NX.
For fans like me, the NX is a make or break console, and if it is a bad console, like the Wii was (sorry Wii fans), we could see a sharp decline and possibly make it their last console, like Sega did with the Dreamcast in 1998 - 2001, but if they do it right, we could potentially see Nintendo finally dominating the video games industry for the first time in 10 years
RAE
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