 So, Tetsumi Kimashima speaking to investors talked about why Mr. Furukawa is going to be the next president of the company and why he feels he's the correct person to lead on the job. And I feel like it's important to have a video about this in particular because none of us really know much about Furukawa in general. Just to recap, the few things that we do know is that he's fluent in English. He's worked closely with the Pokemon company. He's been with Nintendo since 1994. He's been more on the finance side of things, more like in a sort of accountant role. His favorite game recently is Golf Story. And yeah, he was the head of marketing for Switch basically because he became head of marketing in September of 2016 before the Nintendo Switch was unveiled. So the head of global marketing to be more specific there. Anyways, here's what Kimashima had to say about why Furukawa is going to be the next president of Nintendo. I have my own thinking about why Mr. Yamuchi talked about being unusual when he named Mr. Awada as president. Mr. Yamuchi worked for more than 50 years in the game business and he stubbornly stuck to his beliefs. He always felt that software is key to the game business and that creating the software naturally takes time and labor as well as money and that you have to go all out and never quit. He also felt that the purpose of hardware is to bring the best out of the software. And he never changed his thinking on this. I imagine he would say that a person who would be readily banned at Nintendo's core attitudes would be unfit for the job. In a sense, he was calling for a stubborn person or as he might say, a thoroughly unusual person. My understanding is that he used that word to mean someone who would not change no matter what other people or what other companies said and would want to preserve any aspect that makes Nintendo different from the others. As to whether Mr. Furukawa is in any way unusual, I could say that he is extremely strong in her fortitude. He is clear in articulated opinions. He understands the Nintendo point of view and he can express that to everyone in his own words. The corporate planning department headed by Mr. Furukawa has the important mission of conveying the Nintendo point of view to all employees, including people involved in development and sales as well as people in other countries. It is important that the department remain on point no matter where the conversation leads and he has been extremely competent at that. Another component has something to do with the fact that more than half of Nintendo's 5,500 employees work outside of Japan. It would be hard for anyone to lead Nintendo if unable to directly communicate their views to overseas workers, including those in important senior positions, or if they could not make the decisions quickly and lack the capabilities to follow through. That is why I see Mr. Furukawa's overseas work experience as something that makes him a good choice for our new president. After Mr. Yamuchi's presidency, there was a change in the environment surrounding Nintendo, where no longer could any single person decide matters on their own. That was the start of the collective leadership system that I too have carried on. In my view, Mr. Furukawa's role as president is to bring the best out of the excellent people responsible for software development, hardware development, sales, and marketing. He must steer Nintendo as a whole and push for the points that must not change. The executive board resolved to choose Mr. Furukawa as the right person for that role. So he does give a little history there. One thing I forgot to mention and something we do know about Mr. Furukawa is half his career was spent basically working in Nintendo of Germany, which is really weird. You figure he would be fluent in German more so than fluent in English, but that's just the way it is. Because of his experience in Germany, his experience with being able to speak fluent English, he is more readily able to communicate with overseas partners, whether it's in Europe where he spent a large chunk of his career, whether it's with the Pokemon company in Japan or Nintendo local in Japan. Because after all, Mr. Furukawa is Japanese or with the United States and the rest of the English speaking world. Because, well, that's a huge chunk of Nintendo's market. It's something like 60 to 65% of Nintendo's global market share is in English speaking countries. And he could speak directly with the customers there, directly with the senior management. You know, we're talking about Reggie Fesame or Bill Trinidad and stuff like that. So he's got a very unique aspect for where he is definitely born and branded Nintendo, full Japanese, but has that unique ability to communicate across the whole of Nintendo's employees. So that is something very interesting to see that that was one of the key factors in deciding he was the right person for the job, including obviously his work where he has obviously been managing the company's delivering of its messaging from the corporate level down to even the lowest of the employees, which might be what? Game testers, QA testers, but that might be the bottom ring. Not really sure, maybe janitors or something like that. I'm not exactly sure what the bottom ring of employment is at Nintendo. But he's done a good job of communicating that apparently. And we know he's done a great job with global marketing just based on the way Switch has been marketed in general and the way the games for Switch have been marketed, the way Nintendo Label has even been marketed, right? And that doesn't mean there weren't other people involved in those decisions, but he's the one making like, okay, yes, you can do that. And he's put in the stamp of approval. So overall, I think we're in probably a time of change as well. I know you talked greatly about keeping Nintendo the same, keeping, you know, maintaining me in stubborn, not letting outside companies influence what you do or change what you do. And Nintendo has already kind of changed already. Remember like outside companies and even investors were telling Nintendo, go into the mobile game space and then a lot of us stubbornly like, no, we're not going to do that. And then he gave it. So I feel like there is going to be some change because Furukawa's got probably his own vision for the company. We don't know what that vision is. We don't know how much of it is based in tradition versus how much of it is pushing, you know, Nintendo forward. But what we do know is that he's been with the company a long time. He's got a great understanding of the core values that makes Nintendo and Nintendo. And the board is very confident that he is the right person for the job. That's why they pushed him forward. This wasn't just Kimashima choosing a successor. This was the collective of the board, which includes people like Miyamoto deciding that Furukawa is the right person to lead the whole of the company. Now, he did note one interesting change that we weren't really that aware of. So when the Yumuchi family was running Nintendo, it was a very dictator-like running of the company. There was still a board and everything. But essentially, what Yumuchi wanted, Yumuchi got. That's just how the company worked. Under Iwata, apparently it changed over time. Where it became one of those, it doesn't matter if Iwata wants something if the board and the collective doesn't wholly agree. Now, in terms of Iwata, we know the board and the collective generally did agree, or at least enough of them agreed to basically push forward all of Iwata's ideas. Anyways, but it's interesting to note that if Furukawa has what the board considers to be a bad idea, they could block it. And that's just the way that Nintendo is set up now. And what it's interesting, they still call it a board because he's president. He's not called CEO, but they basically renamed the board from a board of executives to fellows and blah blah blah. And he is the leader of all that as well. He is the top dog at Nintendo or will be on June 28th. So does this still do any easing of your mind for the change at president? Does this make you excited after all Furukawa's? Only 46, which is relatively young to be CEO of a company like Nintendo. Mr. Iwata himself started at age 42, which is currently the youngest a CEO has ever started at Nintendo. So he's not the youngest to ever run the company, but he's among his. He can communicate well with contemporaries that are part of the younger development teams as well. I'm sure that played a role in it. So you guys, let me know what you think about this in the console. Are you excited for the Mr. Furukawa's era at Nintendo? I know that I am cautiously optimistic because I don't still, even with all these great words being said, I need to see actions. And a lot of the actions that sounds like we saw were behind the scenes. So now we're going to start seeing these actions publicly and I want to start seeing what is Furukawa's vision and how is it going to be executed? And will it be something that aligns with my desires and my wants? I mean, that's really all I can care about with a company that I'm passionate about is not just that they're doing good delivering to the existing base, but that I feel I'm satisfied with what he's done for my own gaming taste. And that might sound selfish, but I mean, we're all gamers. We all want what we want. And usually it's selfishly wanting something for us. So we'll see how well he does moving forward. E3 will be an interesting turn of the table because I'm sure Mr. Furukawa had a lot to say with how the E3 presentation went, even though he's not president yet, because that's setting up the second half of this year when he very much controls the company. Anyways, folks, I'm Nathaniel Rovedance from Nintendo Prime. And if you like this video, you know what to do. And if you dislike the video, hit that dislike button, subscribe for more content, and I'll catch you in the next one.