Nintendo's legendary pair of game development teams in its Kyoto office are now one big organization.
In additional information released subsequent to its naming of Tatsumi Kimishima as its next president, Nintendo has provided more clarification on the large-scale" restructuring of the company's business and development teams.
Most notably for game players that follow the company closely, its Entertainment Analysis & Development team and the Software Planning & Development teams, which had long operated as separate organizations within the company, would be merged into a new team called Entertainment Planning & Development.
EAD was founded in 1983 with Shigeru Miyamoto, whose game Donkey Kong had been the company's first huge hit two years prior, at its head. It was known at the time as R&D4—Nintendo's then-president Hiroshi Yamauchi's strategy was to establish many different creative teams and have them compete against one another for his approval. EAD was the team that created the Super Mario, Legend of Zelda, Star Fox, and Pikmin series, among others.
SPD was created in 2003 when the R&D1 and R&D2 teams were broken up. It's where lots of Nintendo's weirder game projects, like Wario Ware, Metroid, and Rhythm Heaven come from.
Similarly, two other Nintendo teams with similar missions were combined: Integrated Research & Development, which creates Nintendo's game console hardware, and Nintendo System Development, which creates system-level application software like StreetPass, Miiverse, the eShop, etc. The new team, Platform Technology Development, will "create a structure in which we can more broadly and efficiently conduct technology development necessary for new products and services," Nintendo said.
