George Harrison, Nintendo US Marketing Chief, Steps Down

The Nintendo Marketing Chief, George Harrison, announced in an telephone interview with Reuters that he is leaving the company.

In June there were rumors that some Nintendo officials will leave the company, following Nintendo’s decision to relocate its sales and marketing staff from Redmond, Washington to San Francisco and New York, but Nintendo denied the reports.

Still it seems that the rumors were true and George Harisson is one of those who have chosen to not move to California. "I have confirmed to all employees that I will be leaving at the end of December and not making the move to California," Harrison told Reuters by telephone.

George Harisson joined Nintendo 15 years ago as Director of Advertising and Promotions and in 2001 he moved up to Senior Vice President, Marketing and Corporate Communications.

Harrison’s departure occurs while Nintendo has hit an all time high with its Wii console.

According to the latest data released by NPD Group in August Nintendo Wii has achieved again the first place in terms of sales with 403,600 units. This mean that until now Nintendo sold only in US 4.0 million consoles. During the same month the company managed also to sell 383,300 Nintendo DSs.

So far he Wii-makers said that in the April-June quarter the company sold 3.43 million Wii machines worldwide, which means that the total number of the units sold is 9.27 million units.

From these 3.81 million were sold in the Americas, 2.95 million in Japan and another 2.51 million in other territories.

According to VGChartz.com, Wii has already surpassed Xbox 360 as the next gen console with the largest install base, having sold 10.57 million units in less than a year, compared to 10.51 million units Microsoft’s gaming rig managed to sell in almost two years on the market.

Earlier this year George Harrison said that Nintendo expects to sell as many as 35 million Wii consoles in the United States and approach the record 38.2 million PlayStation 2s sold by Sony. Harrison indicated also the year in which Nintendo hopes to achieve its goal: 2012.