After leaving Nintendo, former WarioWare series director Satoru Abe became a professor at Osaka Electro-Communication University, where he teaches game design and researches new gaming experiences. He stated that shifting to teaching was an attempt to do something he hadn't done before, and he hopes to continue creating in the future.
Satoru Abe joined Nintendo in 1999 and has worked at the company for over 25 years. He contributed to titles such as Wario Land 4 and later served as director of the WarioWare series, with recent credits including WarioWare: Move It! in 2023. He mentioned that after turning 50, he began to consider his future; since game development is time-consuming and the number of projects he could participate in going forward would be limited, he decided to try teaching.
Currently, he teaches game design and its applications in addressing social issues at the university, while also researching new experiences at the Experimental Game Design Laboratory. Satoru Abe says that interacting with students and young players has brought him closer to game users; after leaving Nintendo, he has also gained insight into the perspectives of other companies, developers, and the indie game scene. The strict constraints he faced when producing short mini-games in the past have become valuable experience for explaining design methods.
Although teaching takes up much of Satoru Abe's time, he is still considering collaborating with industry professionals to create something new. He hopes to explore more unexpected and moving games or other forms of entertainment after stepping away from the commercial goals of large companies, allowing people who don't usually play games to experience them as well. These remain personal plans and are not yet an official announcement of a new title.