Yamauchi: The President that would never leave

In his departing speech to Japanese press, former Nintendo president Hiroshi made some interesting comments during the ceremonial handover of power to Satoru Iwata.

Far from taking to a life of relaxing strolls along Brighton Beach, Yamauchi plans to keep a close eye on future Nintendo developments, assuming the role as advisor to, well, pretty much everything as far as we can tell.

Far from Iwata slipping directly into Yamauchi’s role, the old-timer has re-jigged the upper echelons of the Nintendo hierarchy, appointing himself as overseer of the entire operation.

"Six executive board members will form a management team that I hope will move quickly on vital matters," Yamauchi told the news conference. "My job now will be simply to keep an eye on the whole process.”

It will be interesting to see how Yamauchi and Iwata fit into this new corporate mould and we will keep you posted. This news must however, come as a blow to Satoru Iwata, inasmuch as it undermines his new position. The assumption must be that Yamauchi does not have confidence in Iwata’s ability to take over directly from him and run the company in the same way. To compound this, Iwata will now have Yamauchi 'advising' him for the foreseeable future.

We’ll keep an eye on this. It should be fun!