Why Did Nintendo Europe Boss Leave?

The mag reports that David Gosen, who has been at Nintendo Europe's Germany-based HQ for five years, will be stepping down from his role as Managing Director of Sales and Marketing at the end of August. The explanation? He's apparently been offered a better deal at European mobile phone gaming firm, Digital Bridges.

What's that smell in the air? Don't ask us. But unless Gosen just became bored with making excuses as to why Animal Crossing took fifty-three years to arrive on European shores, its worth thinking about the short space of time that has passed since Gosen's latest and most infamous series of outbursts.

Often Gosen performed his duties well, always echoing the sentiments of NCL head Satoru Iwata, while adding a touch of local flavour, just like he's supposed to do. All while doing some sales and marketing, presumably. But recent outbursts have been more and more sensational.

He attached Grand Theft Auto as a "dead-end" franchise, and seemingly went directly against the official Iwata standpoint that current games market needs a revolutionary boost, when he effectively claimed that the opposite is true at the recent UK-based ELSPA conference.

But our choice picks of late would have to be Gosen's MCV comments relating to PSP, when he generated the headline, "Who will buy PSP?", claiming that PSP does not expand the market in any way, while Nintendo DS, er, does. Naturally, he was "supposed" to say something along those lines - but didn't the whole skill of introducing a new product previously involve a degree of common sense? PSP clearly expands the handlheld market - in demographic terms, fanboys - whereas DS, arguably, does not.

He also made comments at the ELSPA event that led directly to rumours of GBA2, not exactly in the best interest of the company at this stage, one would have thought. But of course, this is all just stuff we found noteworthy, and probably has nothing to do with Gosen's departure whatsoever.

Nintendo Europe's President Satoru Shibata conmmented, "David has made a huge contribution to Nintendo over the last five years and we would like to thank him for all his hard work and wish him all the success in the future."

Jim Merrick will be promoted to senior director of European marketing and Tim Freystedt to senior European marketing manager, according to the MCV report.

Adam Doree
Director, Kikizo.com