Nintendo since hiring Reggie... I have to give it an incomplete grade. Reggie's initial role with NOA was to improve marketing and public image. Gamecube, no matter how many terrific exclusives it had, was never going to overcome its image. It's also probably true that the Wii was such a great product that it was never going to fail. However, this is how Reggie has built his career. He is inseparably linked with the successes of Panda Express and Pizza Hut, and now obviously the DS and the Wii. Is that mere coincidence? Nah.
What I'm not able to figure out is if Reggie and the rest of the NOA are just that stupid [regarding the product shortages, shocking lack of game localization, loyalty programs, etc.], or if Japan has them on such a short leash that there's no wiggle room. The latter is the best I can come up with for the complete lack of original video content on the Switch news channel--Japan has probably 2.5 times the amount of news content. The same was true of the "coming soon" games section where Japan would show at least a half dozen games, but in North America we would see maybe two with one of them being a couple of months out. Little details like these make the North American experience feel non-existent or completely dead. Like, at least try to make some hype for the games that are actually releasing for Switch. Just try. We all know Microsoft would hype this sh*t to hell and back because it's the only games we've got for now.
If NOA, and by extension Reggie, are no good with marketing then what purpose do they actually serve? I'd like to think that of all markets, ours would be the one to get the games, the limited edition bundles, the programs and the contests. I would expect we would get the most content and that our branch of Nintendo would be, at minimum, as active as NCL. Instead, ours feels the least active and the most conservative of all. It feels like they're on some kind of tight leash like maybe they got in big trouble with Japan sometime during the later Wii or early Wii U years. Was it the robot chicken stuff? Did that go too far??
Whatever it is, I'm completely unenthused by this NOA.