One of the departing execs had a 35 year run at NoE.
On this North American Labo(u)r Day, there are some changes in both Europe and Japan to report.
In Europe, longtime Nintendo employee Stephan Bole – who replaced Satoru Shibata as NoE President in 2018 – is retiring after 35 years with Nintendo. His replacement will be Luciano Pereña, whose three decade career with Nintendo previously saw him become the company’s Chief Financial Officer: his new duties will include the titles of president, CEO, and chariman of the management board. Pereña will have a new COO and managing director, with Laurent Fischer assuming the former office and the latter being taken by Tom Enoki.
This is part of a larger shakeup in NOE: a series of changes have also been announced for Nintendo’s Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg) operations with former general manager Frank Rittinghaus being promoted to the managing director of marketing for Europe. Rittinghaus’s old role will be filled by Frédéric Michaux. A new head of marketing (Mirjam Hoogendoorn-de Jong) and senior brand manager (Gerben Kaup) have also been appointed.
On the Japanese side, the Nintendo subsidiary previously known as “ND Cube” appears to be renaming itself to “Nintendo Cube”, as the company’s web address (https://www.nd-cube.co.jp) is now redirecting to https://www.nintendo-cube.co.jp/. Originally formed as a partnership between Nintendo and Japanese advertising firm Dentsu, Nintendo has acquired additional shares in the company to the point that they owned 99% of its shares as of last year. Nintendo Cube originally started out as a support studio which also developed F-Zero Maximum Velocity for the GBA, before restructuring in 2010 and hiring a large portion of the staff of Hudson Soft (acquired by Konami around that time) that had worked on previous Mario Party titles. They have continued work on party titles (Mario Party series, Wii Party games) since, as well as working on Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp and bearing partial responsibility for Everybody 1-2 Switch.
