Tecmo Koei CEO Resigns Amid Increased Losses

Tecmo Koei CEO and president Kenji Matsubara announced today he will be resigning from the company later this month, citing "personal reasons" in a statement. Koei co-founder Yoichi Erikawa will immediately take over the president and CEO positions for both the company as a whole and for the Tecmo Koei Games division, reports Andriasang. During his tenure at Koei, Matsubara oversaw the company's merger with Tecmo in 2009, a move Matsubara said would benefit both companies in a previous interview with Gamasutra. "First, we already do distribution. Tecmo does not have domestic [Japanese] distribution," he said in the interview. "Tecmo is very good at working for the Western market, [with] Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden ... That's why we'd like to take the marketing promotion and product marketing [strategy] from Tecmo to Koei, so that Koei titles can be popular in the Western market. That's our strategy." Matsubara's departure announcement comes as the company released sales figures for the six months ending September 30, showing a loss of 1,623 million yen (about $20 million) for the company's video game division, which the company attributed to title delays and investments ahead of future releases. Those video game losses counteracted profits from other divisions including pachinko machines, amusement facilities and other media publishing to create a loss of 1,097 million yen (about $13.5 million) for the company as a whole in the period, a 47 percent increase from the year before.