As part of its latest financial report, Nintendo has announced that it will be merging its European subsidiary companies, including Nintendo France S.A.R.L, Nintendo Benelux B.V, and Nintendo Ibérica, S.A, into one organisation under the title Nintendo of Europe SE.
Currently, these subsidiaries, in addition to the existing Nintendo of Europe located in Frankfurt, Germany, operate their business tailored to each country. Nintendo states that the merger will allow for an improvement in business efficiency and acceleration in decision making.
NOE will remain the existing company, while the subsidiaries in France, Benelux, and Ibérica will effectively cease to exist as singular entities. The company also states that the business of the three merged companies will continue at each of the newly established branches.
To help make things super-duper clear, Nintendo has provided a handy chart that demonstrates a before and after look at Europe's organisation:
Here's a look at the timeline for the merger over the coming months:
July 2023 - Merger of Nintendo France and Nintendo Benelux into Nintendo of Europe
January 2024 - NOE's trade name to be changed to Nintendo of Europe AG
August 2024 - Merger of Nintendo Ibérica into Nintendo of Europe AG
August 2024 - Nintendo of Europe AG’s trade name to be changed to Nintendo of Europe SE
It's unlikely this move will result in much of a material impact to customers, at least not immediately, but it certainly makes sense from a business perspective. Still, it's all a bit of a way off and, according to the timeline above, won't completely finalise until August 2024.
What do you make of this move from Nintendo? Do you think the merger will improve business practices come August 2024? Let us know your thoughts on the matter!
[source nintendo.co.jp]
Comments 32
As a European I welcome these changes if it means we will get more (physical) European releases, of the same as the US at least.
And maybe a good My Nintendo store, Theme Park in Europe, or larger centrally held events, maybe?
Edit: and, as others have pointed out, I hope everybody will get to keep their jobs!
I guess they won't fire people as happens sometimes in those kind of mergers...
Can it improve the distribution of collector's editions?
Do they mention anywhere how this will impact the employees of these regions? There’s bound to be some duplication of roles at the middle-management level at least, surely?
Hopefully it will help the nintendo store in the uk because it needs it.
@Friendly It seems like it would certainly make establishing European stores and theme parks easier if all the subsidiaries are one and the same. I hope that's their plan at least!
I hope this restructuring means good news and no lay-offs. It makes a lot of sense to bring all these decentralized units under a single banner.
Really hope this means we'll be getting a decent store in the Netherlands. The online webshop is horrible compared to the UK one.
Hopefully getting ready for the Musk takeover - I would imagine Tingle, Isaac from Golden Sun & Captain Falcon will be sacked as they haven't contributed much in recent years.
Hopefully this would improve their stores, including decoupling of currencies and languages from the region.
@Rambler Yes, I was trying to be semi-sarcastic. TBH if I worked there in HR, for example, as you too mentioned, I would be afraid of losing my job.
@dew12333 This doesn’t seem to be affecting Nintendo U.K. They aren’t apparently being merged.
@dew12333 @FragRed
Nintendo UK is a very interesting situation, but I would imagine that because of its separation from the EU. However, I'm not sure if this is entirely true or not, but Nintendo UK might be responsible for the English side of Nintendo of Europe.
It doesn't look like the Nintendo of America vs Nintendo of Canada split, where Nintendo of Canada acts more or less as a tiny marketing firm that acts separately from its US counterpart.
The one thing everyone is wondering but no-one is asking... what does the SE stand for, and does it come with a steelbook or soundtrack CD?
This makes sense with the advance of digital distribution, the much more homogenized European landscape in terms of IP rights and licensing practices, than was the case thirty years ago.
I wonder also if this means Nintendo plans to eventually cut ties with Bergsala for Scandinavian distribution.
I’m… honestly surprised Europe hasn’t had this yet, considering NOA has been like that since the start. Hope everything works out for you guys over there.
How about doing something about the terrible Scandinavian (Nordic?) side of the business?
Local entities where established in a different time when sales went primarily through local retailers and there where greater differences in accounting standards between the countries. So these entities where the ones that where the legal contract partners.
With the EU becoming more and more legally cohesive, standardization of accounting practices and cross national wholesale becoming more important, let alone digital sales, the added value of these local entities is getting smaller.
It's not only Nintendo, but it's a trend with all companies (gaming industry or otherwise) to centralize the legal structure in Europe. Local offices will be closed, jobs will be made redundant and contracts with local partners need to be renewed.
@Sinton Probably a matter of time. I would not be surprised to see an announcement that other European offices will be folded into the new structure in 1-2 years from now. It's a step by step process.
I hope that with this change, they start to have more focus on areas where the current NoE doesn't operate or "half-operates". Like, personally I'd love to see them going harder into Poland. ConQuest does a great job as a local distributor, but I want more out of Ninny. Maybe, we'll finally get Polish language?
@FragRed most likely because they are not part of the EU anymore. This is mostly a business decision so having those two merged doesn't make a lot of sense.
@Friendly Europe already gets all of the special physical editions. It's North America that needs to play catch-up at this point. We get no steelbooks for series like Pokemon and our My Nintendo Store here is an absolute joke (unless you happen to live in New York City and have access to Nintendo NY). Nintendo treats Europe far better than North America at this point, or maybe they just throw all their love at the U.K. and from an outsider's perspective it seems Europe gets everything. But I can't begin to tell you how many times I've had to import from various European Amazon sites because a special edition was never released in North America (Canada specifically but even the U.S. doesn't get them).
@DarthFoxMcCloud Where do you get this idea? Seems like most the times there's a special edition, the North American one is much better. It started with Breath of the Wild. It's not only Nintendo's own IP. How about the TMNT Cowabunga Collection and the lacklustre special edition compared to the North American. In addition, the North American market gets several physical releases, where we only get digital versions in Europe.
It would be nice if it meant official Nintendo support in Central Europe, but I very much doubt it. At least you can buy Nintendo games in the stores now, so I guess it's an improvement to what we had 10 years ago, but still. No Nintendo Clubs or anything like that for poor "Eastern" Europe.
That will mean redundancies then. That’ll be what they mean by ‘efficiencies’
could we expect a similar merger to Nintendo of America and it many subdivisions(Nintendo LATAM, Nintendo Brazil)?
@Sinton I “get this idea” by living in Canada and seeing article after article after article on sites like Nintendo Life and Twitter about special editions coming to Switch that are Japanese and Europe exclusive. We may have gotten a great BOTW Special Edition in North America back in 2017 (which 6 people on the entire continent were able to preorder…that’s another matter) but games like Triangle Strategy and other third party games got special editions in Europe only. We are constantly overlooked in North America. Nintendo of America (which is responsible for all 3 countries…..I don’t care what people say, Nintendo of Canada is literally a closet for tax purposes that do nothing) repeatedly refuse to issue any special editions in this region.
@sikthvash Nintendo is already out of Twitter, they no longer do partnoship on Twitter
.
@DarthFoxMcCloud You're right, we got special editions of Triangle Strategy, Astral Chain and Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, while you didn't.
Now, here's a list of things we didn't get, that you did:
Physical versions of the following games:
(At least we could buy the games on the eShop, which we couldn't do when Final Fantasy I, IV and VI, Dragon Quest I, II, III and IV, Chrono Trigger, and Super Mario RPG launched in North America only.)
The following special editions were better in North America than in Europe:
And we never got a special edition of these:
I'm sure I'm missing something both ways, but to claim that you're constantly overlooked … I don't know what to say.
@DarthFoxMcCloud @Sinton All of the resident evil games were physical in America and not in Europe also. In fact most Capcom games get shafted in Europe on physical for Switch.
As for the topic at hand. Not sure I like Germany having more dictatorship over Europe, where their laws disregard other countries laws cough still block Dying Light release cough.
This sounds like a good idea !
@gcunit SE means "Societas Europaea" - a public company registered at the European Union level.
@gilferraz Grade A input that, thanks.
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