Along with Pritchard, Satoru Shibata will also be taking up a new leadership position in Nintendo of America as its chief executive officer (CEO), while also continuing his current role as managing executive officer and corporate director, member of the board at Nintendo. As part of this shake-up, Pritchard will also be joining the board of directors at Nintendo of America, and will become an NCL executive officer.

Bowser had originally joined Nintendo of America back in 2015, taking on the position of vice president of sales and marketing. Over time, he would get promoted to senior vice president of sales and marketing, and was credited with the marketing and promotion of the Nintendo Switch in North America. In 2019, the departure of Reggie Fils-Aimé from his role as president and COO of Nintendo of America led to Bowser taking up the position.

“One of my earliest video game experiences was playing the arcade version of Donkey Kong,” said Bowser in a statement. “Since that time, all things Nintendo have continued to be a passion for both me and my family. Leading Nintendo of America has been the honor of a lifetime, and I am proud of what our team has accomplished in both business results and the experiences we’ve created for consumers.”

“Now, it’s time for the next generation of leadership and Devon’s track record speaks for itself. She is an exceptional leader, and her promotion is a testament to her strong performance and strategic contributions to the company’s growth. I have full confidence that she will guide the company to even greater heights.”

Preceding her upcoming promotion, Pritchard has been working at Nintendo of America in executive positions across various sectors, including marketing, business affairs and publisher relations. She is currently the company’s vice president of revenue, marketing and consumer experience.

“I am humbled and excited to take on this new role,” said Pritchard. “Doug has been a fantastic mentor, and I look forward to building on the incredible foundation he has helped establish. With characters and worlds that offer something for everyone, my focus will be continuing to build on Nintendo’s legacy of surprising and delighting our longtime fans, while at the same time welcoming new players into the Nintendo family.”

The announcement is concluded with a statement by Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa thanking Bowser for his time at the company and all the work he had put in when it came to the launch and marketing behind the Nintendo Switch as well as its succeeding console, the Switch 2.

In an interview with IGN, Trinen said, “I would say it’s less about the strategy of pricing Mario Kart World, it’s more just whenever we look at a given game, we just look at what is the experience, and what’s the content, and what’s the value?

“Mario Kart World, I think especially as you see from the Nintendo Direct, not to give you any hints or anything, but I did read your article this morning, and I think you mentioned that you didn’t find a lot to discover when roaming around. So I would say tune into our Mario Kart Direct to see what. Maybe you’ll be able to find out about that.” The Direct is scheduled for April 17th, though you can view plenty of gameplay from Grand Prix mode here.

“But honestly,” Trinen continued, “This is a game that is so big and vast, and you will find so many little things in it to discover. And there’s still some other secrets remaining that I think as people end up buying and playing the game, they’re going to find this to be probably the richest Mario Kart experience they’ve ever had.”

The same logic applied to Switch 2 editions of titles like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, the former costing $69.99 while the latter is $79.99.

“Well, again, what I would say, is that we just look at each game, and we look at the content and the value of that game, and then we say, ‘What is the right price for the value of this entertainment?’

“What I would probably counter to some of that is that really what you’re looking at is for the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition, that’s the physical price for somebody that has not bought the base game. For somebody who has bought Tears of the Kingdom or Breath of the Wild, the upgrade packs for those are $9.99.

“And if you happen to be a Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack member, both Zelda upgrade packs are inclusive within that membership. So there’s no additional charge for those.” It’s worth noting that NSO + Expansion Pack costs $49.99 yearly, but at least you get some other notable features, like access to GameCube Classics.

“I think overall, our general approach is really just focus on what’s the content, what’s the value, and what’s an appropriate price based on that,” Trinen concluded.

The Nintendo Switch 2 launches on June 5th worldwide for $449.99, though a region-locked version is available exclusively in Japan for cheaper. Pre-orders have been delayed following recent US tariffs, but there’s no change to the release date. Nintendo has yet to indicate whether its price will increase or not.

One of the more conspicuous announcements during Nintendo’s E3 2019 Direct presentation was Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Not just because the game saw new players establishing a new town on a remote island, but because it was also announced that it would not, after all, be coming this year. The delay was due to Nintendo needing more time to make sure the final product meets expectations.

However, it’s also because the company wants to avoid crunch. Speaking to IGN at E3 2019, Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser spoke about crunch and how having a “good work-life balance” is important for its employees. “The crunch point is an interesting one,” he said. “For us, one of our key tenets is that we bring smiles to people’s faces, and we talk about that all the time. It’s our vision. Or our mission, I should say. For us, that applies to our own employees. We need to make sure that our employees have good work-life balance.

“One of those examples is, we will not bring a game to market before it’s ready. We just talked about one example [in Animal Crossing’s delay]. It’s really important that we have that balance in our world. It’s actually something we’re proud of.”

Crunch has become an important conversation in the past several months, especially with stories about Rockstar’s work on Red Dead Redemption 2, mismanagement on BioWare’s Anthem, and so on. Some developers like Asobo Studio, which developed A Plague Tale: Innocence, believe that crunch or overtime work according to the law, compensation, and developer participation could benefit a project in the end. Regardless, it’s good to know that Nintendo is taking its time to get Animal Crossing: New Horizons right while treating its developers well.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is out on March 20th, 2020 for the Nintendo Switch.

Reggie Fils-Aime, the man who has led Nintendo for the better part of the last two decades, steps down from his position today. And now, with him no longer having to watch every word he says to be in the service of Nintendo’s larger messaging, he has finally gone ahead and opened a social media account for himself—specifically, on Twitter.

His Twitter handle is @Reggie (yes, I am as surprised as you are that that wasn’t taken), and he’s just been making a few tweets reminiscing about his time at Nintendo, including his first appearance at E3, which shot him into the stratosphere, and created the cult of personality around him for Nintendo fans that persists to this day.

Fils-Aime is being succeeded at Nintendo by Doug Bowser (yes, that is his real name); it will be interesting to see where Nintendo goes in the coming years under his stewardship.

Hi Twitter community. pic.twitter.com/1XUreHxM5W

— Reggie Fils-Aimé (@Reggie) April 15, 2019

Yesterday, news broke that Nintendo of America’s Reggie Fils-Aime – the President of the company who ushered in the Wii era, saw them through the Wii U era, and launched Nintendo back into relevance with the Switch – will be stepping down come April.

For Nintendo fans, this wasn’t just news of an executive leadership change—Reggie has been a fan-facing figure for over a decade with his fan interactions, his appearances at trade shows, conventions, and Nintendo’s Direct presentations, and the sheer number of memes he has bestowed upon the gaming community (most historically, “my body is ready”). It’s just a general bummer overall then that he will be stepping down.

News of his retirement was greeted with congratulations on his tenure and his achievements by many across the gaming industry—including head of PlayStation’s Worldwide Studios Shawn Layden, head of Xbox Phil Spencer, the official DOOM account, the official Square Enix account, and more. You can see these tweets for yourself below.

Reggie Fils-Aime leaves a massive legacy in his wake—now to see if his successor Doug Bowser (yes, really) will be able to live up to it.

This will always be true. We'll miss you, Reggie. https://t.co/N2zBwQDQlY

— DOOM (@DOOM) February 21, 2019

All the best to Reggie Fils-Aime on the next phase of his life and career. Great leader, industry partner and friend.

— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) February 21, 2019

https://twitter.com/shawnlayden/status/1098741639005102080?s=21

Thank YOU, Reggie, for everything. ♥

— Limited Run Games (@LimitedRunGames) February 21, 2019

Thanks for everything, Reggie!

— Devolver Digital (@devolverdigital) February 21, 2019

We will miss you, Reggie. Thank you for all of your hard work and dedication at Nintendo! pic.twitter.com/Vs7x3QPXRE

— Tetris (@Tetris_Official) February 21, 2019

Thank you, Reggie! We hope you keep on dancing, ten outta ten! pic.twitter.com/H4fgaS2pYa

— YO-KAI WATCH (@YokaiWatchNews) February 21, 2019

https://twitter.com/squareenixusa/status/1098725062209724416?s=21

We will miss you Reggie! That Game Award trophy looks nice in your office! Thank you for everything!

— The Game Awards (@thegameawards) February 21, 2019

Thanks for having a sense of humor. pic.twitter.com/qxQ3yOh7xr

— Cheap Ass Gamer (@videogamedeals) February 21, 2019

*fistbump* pic.twitter.com/eaVU7IWn18

— Gaming (@xGaming) February 21, 2019

Nintendo of America’s legendary President Reggie Fils-Aime will be stepping down after a legendary tenure at the head of the company, Nintendo announced in a press release today. He will be replaced by Doug Bowser, the current Vice President of marketing at Nintendo of America, who is responsible for the incredible Switch branding and marketing, and also has just the perfect name for the job.

“I really appreciate everything Reggie has done for Nintendo,” said Shuntaro Furukawa, President of Nintendo Co., Ltd. “Inside and outside our company, Reggie is known as an exceptional leader. We are grateful that he is leaving the business in good shape with strong momentum. While we will miss him and we wish him the very best in his retirement, we are also pleased to have such an able successor ready to step into that role. Doug Bowser and the rest of the team will ensure a seamless transition and continued momentum for Nintendo.”

“Nintendo owns a part of my heart forever,” Fils-Aime said. “It’s a part that is filled with gratitude – for the incredibly talented people I’ve worked with, for the opportunity to represent such a wonderful brand, and most of all, to feel like a member of the world’s most positive and enduring gamer community. As I look forward to departing in both good health and good humor, this is not ‘game over’ for me, but instead ‘leveling up’ to more time with my wife, family and friends.”

“It has been my great fortune to work with and be mentored by Reggie for four years at Nintendo of America,” Bowser said. “And rest assured, we will continue to build on his work to evolve and expand our brand, furthering Nintendo’s global mission of creating smiles. There are millions more of those to come.”

Fils-Aime has presided over Nintendo through some of the most eventful periods of its history. He joined the publisher during their GameCube era, spearheaded the “blue ocean” philosophy along with then Nintendo President Satoru Iwata, leading Nintendo to utter and uncontested market dominance with the Wii and DS, saw the sudden and unexpected decline of Nintendo with the Wii U and the 3DS, and their subsequent resurgence (again) with the Switch.

While Bowser, being his protege, will hopefully continue Reggie’s inimitable style of management and marketing, Reggie’s presence, which included his appearances during E3, as well as Nintendo’s Direct presentations, and other fan facing events, will be sorely missed.

UPDATE: Reggie Fils-Aime has issued a farewell message to Nintendo fans ahead of his retirement. Take a look below:

Nintendo fans, Reggie has a message for all of you. Please take a look. pic.twitter.com/EAhaEl5oEJ

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) February 21, 2019

With the Nintendo Switch hogging the limelight for Nintendo, helping it rise back to dominance in this console generation, one continues to wonder about the fate of the Nintendo 3DS. The handheld platform has had over 1,000 games release at this point but with the Switch providing an even more powerful portable solution, does the 3DS really have a future?

Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime says it does – the company actually has some new 3DS games to announce in the coming months. Speaking to IGN, Fils-Aime stated that, “We’re going to continue [focusing on the 3DS], we’re going to continue to have some new games on that platform. We’re going to announce [them], and we will over the next number of months, but it’s going to continue to be a vibrant piece of our overall business, certainly here in the Americas.”

What about Mario Kart Tour, the mobile version of the popular kart racer that was announced earlier this year? It was notably absent from E3 2018 but as per Fils-Aime, that wasn’t the right place to talk about it.

“Depending on the game, E3 could or could not be a place to shed light on mobile activity. In the case of Mario Kart Tour, we made the decision that there’s going to be another opportunity to shed more light on that app, especially shedding light when it’s closer to its launch. We continue to be on track to launch it in this current fiscal year for Nintendo.”

Nintendo has seen some very strong success in the mobile market thanks to titles like Fire Emblem Heroes and Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp. This combined with the Mario Kart IP more or less means another strong mobile IP but we’ll have to wait for more details on the release date.

Following a listing on the Nintendo Switch eShop stating that it was out in 2019, Nintendo has now officially confirmed that Yoshi Switch has been delayed. Yoshi wasn’t seen in the E3 2018 presentation (which, oddly enough, was full of other 2019 titles) and isn’t present on the E3 show floor either.

Nintendo of America president and chief operating officer Reggie Fils-Aime said that Yoshi “continues to be in development making great progress” in an interview with Polygon at E3. It doesn’t seem like we’ll know what’s going on with it anytime soon.

Then again, Nintendo has a habit of running Direct presentations throughout the year, providing updates on release dates and the like beforehand. Whether this will be the case for Yoshi or not later remains to be seen.

Other Nintendo Switch titles conspicuously missing from Nintendo’s E3 2018 showcase include Metroid Prime 4 (whose absence was later explained by Nintendo), Bayonetta 3 and Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes (also slated to release in 2018).

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.

A new Metroid? The long-awaited sequel to Mother aka Earthbound finally releasing in the West? There’s nothing to announce currently but Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime is more than aware about “key IP” that fans want to see.

Speaking to GameSpot, Fils-Aime said, “Oh, so earlier today I got asked about Mother 3; maybe you can ask me about Metroid. Look, again, I am proud as an executive with Nintendo to say that we look at all of the boards and all of the comments and we really have a good understanding of what our consumers want. And believe me, we take that to heart as we work to create content.

“So I have nothing to announce–here. But we are aware that there are some key IP that consumers just can’t wait for the next true installment in that franchise’s legacy. Suffice it to say, we’re aware of it, and talk to me in a year and let’s look back and see what’s happened.”

Another interesting to note is how the Switch won’t have “large gaps” between releases with the focus being ib “a regular cadence of critical launches to drive the install base and keep the consumer base engaged.”

Nintendo Switch is out on March 3rd so we’ll find out just how likely that is in the coming months.