WarioWare Director Goro Abe Leaves Nintendo for University Professor Role

Goro Abe announced on X on March 9 that he resigned from Nintendo at the end of February 2026, ending a tenure that stretched back to 1999 and produced nine WarioWare titles across nearly every major Nintendo platform of the past quarter century.

Abe, who goes by @goroemon on X, will join Osaka Electro-Communication University starting in April as a professor in its 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," Abe wrote in the post, according to a machine translation published by GamesIndustry.biz.

His directorial credits at Nintendo span the full arc of the WarioWare series: from WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Party Games on GameCube through WarioWare: Twisted on Game Boy Advance, Touched on DS, Smooth Moves on Wii, DIY on DS, Game & Wario on Wii U, Gold on 3DS, Get It Together on Switch, and finally WarioWare: Move It on Switch in 2023, which GamesIndustry.biz identified as his final directorial project at the company.

The move to academia does not appear to be a full exit from game-making. Abe stated plainly that he intends to continue working on game-related research and game development in his new role, framing the university position as a way to reach a broader audience and pass knowledge to newer generations of creators. Some outlets characterized the departure as leaving the games industry entirely, but that framing sits in tension with Abe's own stated intentions.

Abe's 26-to-27-year tenure is a significant outlier even within Nintendo's own retention figures. A report from last summer found that Nintendo Japan employees stay with the company an average of 14.4 years, while Nintendo of Europe averages 11.1 years, Nintendo of America 10 years, and Nintendo Australia 8.5 years.

Nintendo has seen several prominent developers leave in recent years, though departures at Abe's seniority level remain uncommon. Osaka Electro-Communication University has not issued a public statement confirming the appointment, and Nintendo has not publicly commented on the resignation.