Learning about Nintendo president Kimishima - career, mobile plans, responsibility to gamers

Coming from a TIME interview with Nintendo President Tatsumi Kimishima...

- 15 years ago, Kimishima met up with former Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi
- Yamauchi informed Kimishima he’d be starting with Nintendo in a month
- Yamauchi was interested in Kimishima based on his unusual banking history
- at the time Kimishima only knew of Pikachu, but Yamauchi wanted Kimishima to head a Pokemon HQ in the states
- Yamauchi's meeting with Kimishima lasted about an hour and Yamauchi talked nearly the entire time
- Kimishima then joined the Pokémon Company as its chief financial officer in late 2000
- he left in 2002 to become president of Nintendo of America, simultaneously joining the company’s board of directors
- years later, he became the American branch’s chief executive officer
- in 2013, he was promoted again to managing director of the company, for which he moved back to Japan
- Reggie and Kimishima worked closely together and Reggie says Kimishima is the “the ideal successor to Mr. Iwata.”
- Reggie recalls how Kimishima was key to solving the stock issues with Wii/DS
- Kimishima began persuasively working behind the scenes to align global Nintendo organizations
- Reggie says Kimishima is low profile, but very high efficiency
- Iwata was unsure of Kimishima's ability to solve the Wii/DS stock issue, but Reggie assured Iwata that Kimishima could do i- - Kimishima says "Success is not the result of individual efforts. It is really the result of having good fortune, or having good luck. It’s not our place to go out and say ‘Hey, look at me, I did this, I was successful!'”

Kimshima shares his feelings and responsibilities he has with Nintendo:

“I feel that I have a firm understanding of this company. I know how it operates. I know there are strings that can be leveraged, and that there are areas where improvement is required, and all this creates a great sense of responsibility. I feel responsible for every employee. I feel responsible for every shareholder. Perhaps most importantly I feel responsible for every single gamer.”

Kimishima shares his thoughts on the mobile industry and how to get the attention of consumers:

“Normally if you look at the smart device business, applications are not advertised, they’re not promoted, you just open up the app store and boom, there’s a whole bunch of new apps. It’s just like, ‘Here they are!’, and they’re delivered to you. Taking time and money and effort to create large commercials around smart device applications has not been part of this business traditionally.”

- Kimishima says Yamauchi taught him the importance of staying within one’s means
- Kimishima chose not to appear in the the last Nintendo Direct