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Nintendo Entertainment Planning and Development (or EPD; is the largest division inside Nintendo of Japan, under the management of Shigeru Miyamoto. This team mostly focuses on the development of games.

EPD is best known for their work on games in the Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Pikmin, and Donkey Kong franchises, among several other titles.

The Renaming of Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development (2003-2015)[ | ]

On September 30, 2003, as a result of a corporate restructure Nintendo was undergoing, in which several members of the Nintendo R&D1 and R&D2 were reassigned under Nintendo EAD, the department was consolidated into a division and began welcoming a new class of managers and producers. Hideki Konno, Katsuya Eguchi, Eiji Aonuma, Hiroyuki Kimura, and Tadashi Sugiyama were appointed project managers of their own groups within the Software Development Department; Shimizu was appointed project manager of the Tokyo Software Development Department, and Keizo Ota and Yasunari Nishida were appointed project managers of their own groups in the Technology Development Department. In 2013, Katsuya Eguchi was promoted Department Manager of both Software Development Departments in Kyoto and Tokyo. As such, he left his role as Group Manager of Software Development Group No. 2, and was replaced by Hisashi Nogami. On June 18, 2014, the EAD Kyoto branch was moved from the Nintendo Central Office to the Nintendo Development Center in Kyoto. The building housed more than 1100 developers from all of Nintendo's internal research and development divisions, which included the Nintendo EAD, SPD, IRD and SDD divisions. On September 16, 2015, EAD merged with Nintendo Software Planning & Development into a single game development division, Entertainment Planning & Development (EPD). The move followed an internal restructuring of Nintendo executives and departments after the death of former president Satoru Iwata in July 2015.

Nintendo EPD's New Era (2015-Present)[ | ]

The division was created on September 16, 2015, after the consolidation of two of Nintendo's former software divisions, Entertainment Analysis & Development (EAD) and Software Planning & Development (SPD), as part of a company-wide organizational restructure that took place under Nintendo's then newly appointed president, Tatsumi Kimishima. The division assumed both of its predecessors' roles, focusing on the development of games and software for Nintendo platforms and mobile devices; it also manages and licenses the company's various intellectual properties, alongside producing and supervising development for external studios. Shinya Takahashi, former head of Nintendo SPD, serves as the general manager of the division, with Yoshiaki Koizumi, Katsuya Eguchi, Eiji Aonuma, and Hisashi Nogami serving as deputy general managers, and, Kensuke Tanabe, Yoshio Sakamoto and Takashi Tezuka acting as senior officers. While the others were in such positions since the division's formation, Aonuma, Tanabe and Nogami were promoted into higher positions within the division in 2019.

Notable Games Developed by EPD[ | ]

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