A decade and a half of names taken and asses kicked.
There is about to be a change at the top of Nintendo of America.
Nintendo of America announced today that current president Reggie Fils-Aime will be retiring on April 15. Doug Bowser, Nintendo's current senior VP of sales and marketing, will succeed him in the role.
Reggie started with Nintendo as an Executive VP of Sales and Marketing in 2003, though his first major public appearance was at E3 2004 in which he promised to "kick ass and take names". He would later be promoted to President and Chief Operating Officer in 2006, and to CEO in 2015 following the passing of Satoru Iwata.
Doug Bowser joined Nintendo of America in 2015 as the Vice President of Sales, before ascending to his current position the next year. Prior to joining NoA, Bowser was a Vice President of Global Business Planning at Electronic Arts.
Fils-Aime shared a message shortly after NoA made the announcement, which you can see below:
Nintendo fans, Reggie has a message for all of you. Please take a look. pic.twitter.com/EAhaEl5oEJ
— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) February 21, 2019
I never understood the love of Reggie. He did have one or two great E3 presentations.
I feel old because I still see Reggie as the new guy and here he is retiring after 15 years.
I associate Reggie mostly with the Wii era which I consider Nintendo's creative low point. Most of what I dislike about that era was completely out of NOA's control but one of the big things that was within Reggie's control was the localization of the Rainfall games. I also remember on the DS debut Reggie said the game he was most impressed with was some Spider-man game that history has forgotten about. That was the big red flag that indicated that this guy was not into videogames. Picking the licenced IP game is like something my Dad would do. That was very early into his career with Nintendo so he started on the wrong foot with me.
But he seems like a likable guy in person and I don't have any problem with how NOA is handling things now so I wasn't calling for his departure. With fans he's as iconic as the Nintendo IP itself. You didn't see someone like Howard Lincoln having this kind of fandom, but then internet memes weren't a thing during his NOA tenure. Does Reggie inspire the memes because of his personality or because he was simply the face of NOA when internet memes took off as a thing? We'll find out I guess.
Good luck to him and Nintendo is currently doing great both creatively and financially. So he's leaving on a high note.
What is this endless hatred for the Wii? It was a huge hit when it came out and it appealed to non-gamers as well as gamers. This is an accomplishment that has still never been replicated, all these years later. There were games like Wii Tennis and Wii Bowling that provided tons of multiplayer fun, along with exercise! And let's not forget Wii Fit. This is hardly a "creative low point" for Nintendo.