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SNK Appoints Kenji Matsubara as CEO
posted on by Alex Mateo
SNK announced on Thursday that it will appoint Kenji Matsubara as its chief executive officer (CEO) on August 1. With this appointment, the company is aiming for "further growth and an increase in corporate value."
Matsubara was previously CPO, COO, and president of Sega Games, CEO and president of Zynga Japan, and representative director and president of Koei Tecmo Holdings Co., Ltd.
SNK will release a new console in 2021.
SNK Corporation was founded in 1978, but the company filed for bankruptcy in 2001. SNK Playmore was founded in August 2001, and the company also developed pachinko slot machines and smartphone games aside from console games, but withdrew from the pachislot (pachinko parlor slot machine game) business in 2015. SNK Playmore then changed back its name to SNK Corporation in December 2016.
SNK is known for its franchises such as King of Fighters, Metal Slug, Fatal Fury (Garō Densetsu), and Samurai Shodown (Samurai Spirits), and the NeoGeo console.
SNK released the Neo Geo Arcade Stick Pro stick in November 2019. The hardware can link to the Neo Geo Mini system, which shipped in Japan in July 2018 with 40 games from the original Neo Geo system.
The Neo Geo family of systems began with the cartridge-based Neo Geo MVS arcade system, and its home console counterpart the Neo Geo AES, in 1990. At the time of its release, SNK touted an arcade-perfect experience with the AES, as it shared the same hardware as its arcade counterpart. SNK developed many of its most iconic game franchises for the system. SNK later released the Neo Geo CD and Hyper Neo Geo 64 systems. The Neo Geo Pocket and Neo Geo Pocket Color, released in 1998 and 1999 respectively, were earlier attempts at a portable version of the arcade system.
