Tatsumi Kimishima is a Japanese businessman and a former president of Nintendo. He was formerly the president of Nintendo of America from January 2002, succeeding Minoru Arakawa, until Reggie Fils-Aimé took his place in May 2006. He was promoted to managing director in June 2013 and was named the fifth president of the company in September 2015, succeeding Satoru Iwata, who died in July 2015. In June 2018, Kimishima stepped down as president and was succeeded by Shuntaro Furukawa.
Kimishima was approached by Hiroshi Yamauchi, who wanted someone outside of the video game industry to oversee the finances of an American subsidiary for the popular Pokémon franchise. Kimishima accepted the position, and was appointed chief financial officer of The Pokémon Company in December 2000. In 2001, Kimishima was appointed president of Pokémon USA Inc. During Kimishima's early time working there, a number of popular Pokémon games were released.
Nintendo
After the release of the GameCube in 2001, president of Nintendo since 1949, Yamauchi felt that it was the right time to step down from his position. His son-in-law, Minoru Arakawa, took over the role as president of Nintendo in America, but retired only one year later in 2002. Yamauchi appointed Tatsumi Kimishima to become president of Nintendo of America in January 2002. He was previously working as the head of Nintendo's Pokémon division. Four years after Kimishima's promotion he was promoted again, but this time to the position of Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board. In April 2013, Kimishima was promoted to Managing Director of Nintendo Co., Ltd., and Satoru Iwata took his place as chief executive officer of Nintendo of America.
President
On September 14, 2015, after the death of Iwata in July 2015, Kimishima was named company president of Nintendo. Shigeru Miyamoto and Genyo Takeda were also put into senior advisory roles as "Creative Fellow" and "Technology Fellow", respectively. Kimishima described his desire to follow Iwata's general strategy, stating that "Takeda and Miyamoto will be in charge of software development, while I control administration". In May 2016, Kimishima announced that Nintendo were going to start their own film production, and that they were looking for filmmakers for their projects. As President of Nintendo, Kimishima also oversaw the launch of the Nintendo Switch, and appeared in the 2017 Nintendo Switch Presentation. In April 2018, Nintendo announced that Kimishima would be stepping down as president on June 28, 2018, being succeeded by Shuntaro Furukawa.
