Furukawa on what he’ll be prioritizing as Nintendo president; company revolves around “new and innovative content”
Assuming he’s approved in a couple of months from now, Shuntaro Furukawa will be promoted to president of Nintendo. He’ll be taking over for Tatsumi Kimishima, the current president.
At Nintendo’s financial results briefing last week, Furukawa was asked about his goals at the company. He pointed to maintaining Switch’s momentum, expanding mobile efforts, looking at projects like Super Nintendo World and movies, and “how we can lay down new pathways that positively enhance our dedicated video game platform business.”
Below are Furukawa’s full words regarding his goals:
The company will be managed by the members of a new executive management committee under a next-generation collective leadership system. Mr. Kimishima has shown through his own actions what it means to manage a company collectively rather than relying on the efforts of a single person, and I understand my role as one of continuing on that same course. We have executive officers in charge of hardware development, in charge of software development, and in charge of sales and marketing. They all have their different strengths, so I intend to have frequent one-on-one conversations with them, share any background or context behind how things are done, and do everything I can to be mindful of engaging in management together as a team.
As for issues, my highest priority task right now is to accelerate the momentum behind Nintendo Switch and to expand the business. Other issues include the question of how to expand our smart-device business, and whether we can nudge the scale of that business into a larger portion of our overall business.
I am also looking at the topic of the yet-to-be-realized theme park and movie projects that are part of our strategy of expanding the number of people who have access to Nintendo IP (Intellectual Property), and how we can lay down new pathways that positively enhance our dedicated video game platform business.
During the same question, Kimishima was also asked about using money effectively and not just building up cash reserves. That eventually prompted him to say that “Nintendo business revolves around creating new and innovative content, so that is where we must invest the most.”
Kimishima noted:
“With regards to the use of cash reserves, we managed to turn a substantial profit in the previous fiscal year (ended March 2018), as was announced. And as you can see in our Earnings Release, the annual dividends this time total 70.8 billion yen. And if you read through the statement of income, you will see that we need to pay corporate income tax and some other taxes. So even though our profits grew, that does not necessarily build up more of our cash reserves, because we have those dividends and taxes to pay.
At its core, the Nintendo business revolves around creating new and innovative content, so that is where we must invest the most. We want to keep consumers engaged, and with technology advancing at such a tremendous pace, we will want to consider investing in parties that have technologies we feel are a good match for Nintendo, if we can find them. I cannot provide any details at this time, but we are looking at all kinds of possibilities, and will continue
to do so.”
