Nintendo Of Europe Announces Leadership Changes As President Resigns

Laurent Fischer, isn't he the George Clooney clone?

This is interesting. I wonder if it’ll have any effects on anything like the EU My Nintendo store

Wouldn't that mean he retired as that sounds much better than oh I resign. It makes it sound like he was forced out.

It'll take a lot to replace Shibata. I wonder how he's doing these days?

@Gavintendo Yes he is.

@dequesi Thought so. I remember him being mentioned in an old UK Nintendo magazine, and from an EU 3DS reveal/launch party thing with Jonathan Ross.

Did Tom Enoki serve as an inspiration for Tom Nook? lol

Stephan Bole used to give interviews to French newspapers once or twice a year, I think back when he was leading Nintendo France. He always sounded to me like he was purely an accountant, just reading numbers and repeating a couple of lines we had already heard from Reggie, or Miyamoto or anybody else from Nintendo. But he certainly never added a personal touch.
I remember wondering when he was promoted if this is actually what Nintendo prefered in those overseas roles.
I can't imagine him leaving would have any kind of impact for Europe's business. But you never know. Curious what he could possibly be up to so late in his career.

I miss Shibata. He was great on the European Directs

@Duncanballs he was an absolute treasure. I miss the Directs from that era. The quirky presentations with Satoru Iwata. Shigeru Miyamoto, Reggie Fils-Aime and Satoru Shibata were good fun!

I wonder if these changes will result in better support of European languages in Nintendo games.

@Pillowpants what a quartet they were.

@RainbowGazelle According to his Wikipedia page this:

(2018 - Present):
Satoru Shibata (柴田 聡, Shibata Satoru) is the senior executive officer, general manager of marketing and licensing for Nintendo as well as the outside director of The Pokémon Company.

I wish Nintendo of Europe would get themselves into gear. Always feel they are practically invisible compared to Japan and US.

@Itachi2099 Probably not but it's still a funny coincidence, like Doug Bowser. Maybe I should change my name to John MetaKnight???

@Roibeard64 I felt they were really great during the Wii/DS/3DS era where they gave better translations/English dubs for games than NoA (e.g. Zelda Spirit Tracks, Xenoblade Chronicles, The Last Story, Pandora's Tower, Project Zero 2: Wii Edition). We also got loads of earlier game releases, or ones that were never localised in America like Another Code R.

I hope any NoE bigwig finally decides to add support for more languages. It's baffling that there are some games which have Polish language versions on other platforms but not Switch. Overcooked is one such example.

@Yalloo After Iwata passed away and Reggie left it felt like the current leadership wanted less of a focus on big personalities, so the execs have largely faded into the background. I'm sure they're all good at their jobs (or I hope so!), but they've felt to me like pure business people rather than being the marketable face of the company. Which is fine I guess and it lets the games do the talking and the bosses to focus on the bigger picture, but I do miss the fun and quirky Nintendo which seems to have been lost a bit in the Switch era. There's also a feeling of it being more strictly led from Japan with less opportunity for the regional offices to do their own thing.

Any excuse to replay my favourite clip from a corporate presentation... I miss Shibata.

https://youtu.be/EoFyXO-MEW0?si=0JUqadCYV1pn_RqP&t=24

As an American, it comes as news to me that Shibata has been gone for all this time. I thought he was still president of NOE. I guess he left around the same time as Reggie? What was the reason for his departure? From what little I knew, he seemed like a fun-loving individual who embodied a lot of Iwata. Can't believe I'm only just now realizing he left. It's crazy how much of the company staff is no longer there.

@Not_Soos I Googled him, and it looks like he took up professional wrestling after leaving NoE.

@Roibeard64 recently yeah... It seems like we're the distant third in terms of information, marketing and all. I did get this thing regarding the Gamescom lack of anything: Even though there were like a week away from PAX (or maybe because of it and the lack of E3), it's quite extreme how it seems as if it is NoA the one that commisions demos and maybe then those drip into European events.

In a way, it feels better to go bug the NoA team about an issue than to bug our own branch to have things done these days.