Nintendo is closing its Redwood City, California and Toronto, Canada offices, the company confirmed in a statement to The Verge. Kotaku reported on the closure of the Redwood City offices earlier on Friday.
Here is the company’s full statement on the decision:
Nintendo of America headquarters are in Redmond, WA, and Vancouver, BC. We are moving more of our employees and operations into those headquarters and will be closing small satellite offices in Toronto, ON, and Redwood City, CA, over time.
Devon Pritchard, Executive Vice President, Business Affairs and Publisher Relations for Nintendo of America (NOA), will assume interim leadership of Sales, Marketing and Communications following the departure of Nick Chavez. Ms. Pritchard will oversee strategy and execution of sales, marketing and communications across the U.S. and Canada.
Kotaku reports that about 100 employees have been displaced in the Redwood City offices as a result of the decision. Nintendo declined to comment when we asked how many employees would be affected by the move, but its statement above does suggest some employees will be able to relocate. It’s not clear why the offices are being closed.
The Redwood City office is still shown on a map of Nintendo’s office locations on the company’s jobs website. “Here you’ll find the Sales and Marketing departments, as well as NMI, a dedicated merchandising field team who work with retail stores across the country,” a description reads. The Toronto office is also still on the site, described as a “sales office for NOCL.”
As of earlier today, there were no open positions listed for the Redwood City location, even the company appears to have had an open role for a “Specialist, Experiential Marketing” as recently as two days ago, according to Google caches.
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Given that the Redwood City office was focused on sales, marketing, and merchandising, it likely won’t affect the development of Nintendo’s games or hardware. Most of Nintendo’s games are developed overseas, though it also has developer Retro Studios in Texas.
The closure comes just weeks after the launch of the Nintendo Switch with an OLED screen and Metroid Dread, one of Nintendo’s biggest games of the year.