Goro Abe, the director of most of the WarioWare series, has left Nintendo.

The news was announced via Abe’s personal social media account, where he confirmed that he had left Nintendo back in February 2026 to become a professor at the Osaka Electro-Communication University’s Game and Social Design Program. He was part of the team that created the first WarioWare game, and worked as the Director of the rest of the series up until the latest entry WarioWare: Move It on the Switch.

You can read Abe’s message below:

“I resigned from Nintendo at the end of February. Starting in April, I will be working as a professor at Osaka Electro-Communication University. I will be part of the newly established ‘Game and Social Design Program’. I plan to engage in research related to games and game development, so I hope to interact with a wider range of people in various ways than ever before.”

In recent years, many prominent creators at Nintendo have left the company to retire or move on to new ventures. Many of Nintendo’s old guard have been with the company for many years and aren’t getting any younger, so we will likely continue to hear such stories moving forward.

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