WarioWare Director Goro Abe Leaves Nintendo, Joins University as Professor

Goro Abe, the chief director behind Nintendo's WarioWare series from its Game Boy Advance debut through 2023's WarioWare: Move It!, announced on X that he retired from Nintendo at the end of February and will begin a professorship at Osaka Electro-Communication University starting in April.

"I retired from Nintendo at the end of February," Abe wrote on X under his handle @goroemon. "From April, I will be working as a professor at Osaka Electro-Communication University. I will be affiliated with the newly established 'Game and Social Design' program. I plan to work on game-related research and development, so I hope to be able to interact with a wider range of people than ever before."

The original Japanese post identifies his new affiliation as the 「ゲーム・社会デザイン専攻」, which translates variously across outlets as the "Game and Social Design" program, department, or major, depending on the translator. The program is described as newly established within the university.

Abe joined Nintendo in 1999, roughly 27 years before his February departure, after a brief stint at Ascii in 1996. His first Nintendo credit was as a programmer on Wario Land 4 for the Game Boy Advance. He quickly moved into a central role on the original WarioWare, handling game design, graphic design, and microgame programming, and went on to direct or co-direct every subsequent entry in the series: WarioWare Inc: Mega Party Games on GameCube, WarioWare Twisted on GBA, WarioWare: Touched on DS, WarioWare: Smooth Moves on Wii, WarioWare: DIY on DS, Game & Wario on Wii U, WarioWare Gold on 3DS, WarioWare: Get It Together on Switch, and finally Move It! on Switch in 2023.

Abe's exit is the latest in a string of high-profile departures from Nintendo. Kensuke Tanabe, who worked on Metroid Prime and Paper Mario, said that Metroid Prime 4: Beyond was his last project with the company. Hideki Konno, who led development on Mario Kart and the 3DS hardware, also departed earlier in 2026. Abe's roughly 27-year tenure is notably long even by Nintendo Japan's own standards: prior data cited by GamesIndustry.biz put the average employee tenure at Nintendo Japan at 14.4 years, compared to 11.1 years for Nintendo of Europe, 10 years for Nintendo of America, and 8.5 years for Nintendo Australia.

Despite the series losing its longest-serving creative anchor, the WarioWare franchise has historically operated with multiple layers of directorial leadership beneath Abe, with individual developers pitching the microgame concepts that define each entry. Move It! remains his final credited directorial work, and no announcement about the series' future direction has been made by Nintendo.