Last week, Nintendo announced that Tatsumi Kimishima, the man who oversaw the overwhelmingly successful launch of the Nintendo Switch and helped bring Nintendo out of the Wii U fiasco, would be stepping down as president of the company, to be handed off to Shuntaro Furokawa.
In an interview with Nikkei Asia, Kimishima clarified that Furukawa was selected to succeed him and take the reigns of Nintendo because of how he knows exactly how to draw out the best of their development teams. Furukawa also created the business plan for Nintendo for the immediate to far future which possibly indicates that Nintendo already has plans for their next hardware, whenever that will be.
While much of this plan wasn’t discussed, two details of note came from it. Firstly, Furukawa wants to expand the Nintendo Switch business to new markets outside of North America, Europe and Japan, hoping to tap into regions such as the Middle East and South East Asia. Further, Furukawa is setting up a board of five directors, including himself, who will make the decisions on where to steer the ship. Nintendo Switch is already heading in positive directions, with 17.79 million units sold.