Topic: Wii U - e3 is over... now what?

[Shaymin]

I'm pretty sure "My body is ready" was the moment the shark was leapt.

[BlackNMild2k1]

Reggie became a meme machine.

We can no longer take him seriously.




edit:
I read some slightly worrying news hearsay about Wii U.
It's still early and might just be taken out of context, but I really hope Nintendo is doing all they can to secure "core" titles for launch and beyond from ALL 3rd party devs. Not just the ones they usually get games from.

[Kytim89]

Reggie became a meme machine.

We can no longer take him seriously.




edit:
I read some slightly worrying news hearsay about Wii U.
It's still early and might just be taken out of context, but I really hope Nintendo is doing all they can to secure "core" titles for launch and beyond from ALL 3rd party devs. Not just the ones they usually get games from.

If Nintendo could just get GTa 5 on the Wii U then all other third parties that skipped the Wii would appraoch the table. There might be a chance that GTA 5 could be released this year (october?) and be a Wii U launch title. How bad ass would that be?

[ThePerm]

pretty badass

but you know how it goes

to the mainstream as soon as it comes to nintendo it becomes passé

[Chozo Ghost]

The problem I have with Reggie is he is a sellout who only cares about the casual market.

[TJ Spyke]

How exactly do you consider him a sell-out? He is a businessman, and doing a pretty god job at it too.

[Chozo Ghost]

He is a businessman, and doing a pretty god job at it too.

That's exactly my point. This is what he cares about; not the fans. He wouldn't bring any of the Operation Rainfall games over except one, and even that one he is doing in a half ass way. All because its not a casual game that would rake in the easy money of suckers. I am doubtful that Reggie is a gamer himself. He went from pizzas and VH1 to this, so he probably just sees this as yet another job to him.

[Kairon]

Ahh... the arc of the "Reggie" persona...

[ThePerm]

you know Nintendo of America is just a puppet group for Nintendo Japan? He doesn't really make sweeping decisions, at best he's a figure head who gives them input. The last group of people to have a lot of clout with Japan were Peter Main, Minoru Arakawa, and Howard Lincoln. If you look back, around the time they left, that's when the relationship with western studios like Rare waned. I'm sure if Reggie sticks around long enough he'll be more important to the company. Actually Yamauchi left around the same time, really outside of EAD Nintendo is a totally different company.

[NWR_insanolord]

I don't think NOA is as much of a puppet as it used to be, largely because NCL under Iwata has given it more latitude. NOE doesn't seem to have been given this kind of freedom, at least not yet.

[nickmitch]

Examples anyone? One guy can't say one thing and another guy say the opposite without either one really giving proof.

[NWR_insanolord]

I think the whole Xenoblade situation suggests that what I said is true. NOA had enough clout to say they didn't want to release it. Now, whether NOE didn't do the same was because they didn't have the ability to say no to NCL or for unrelated reasons isn't clear, but I think the most logical explanation for some of the release decisions in recent years is that Iwata is delegating more authority to Reggie than NCL had in the past. The funny thing is that he's using that power to make decisions that we really don't like, whereas if you'd told us a decade ago that NOA would be less of a puppet of NCL and be able to make its own decisions most of us probably would have thought it'd be great.

[nickmitch]

You could argue that the other way though. There was a pretty vocal campaign to get Xenoblade to NA, but NOA remained silent. NCL probably wouldn't even notice anything going on and probably wouldn't care. NOA begs, NCL says no, fans stay pissed. Eventually, NOA finds a way to convince NCL to let them put out Xenoblade and here we are.

[ThePerm]

I think NCL is giving NOA more latitude lately, Stock holders were complaining. Something was mentioned in Iwatas stockholder thing last year.

[NWR_insanolord]

You could argue that the other way though. There was a pretty vocal campaign to get Xenoblade to NA, but NOA remained silent. NCL probably wouldn't even notice anything going on and probably wouldn't care. NOA begs, NCL says no, fans stay pissed. Eventually, NOA finds a way to convince NCL to let them put out Xenoblade and here we are.

That scenario would make a lot more sense if NOE hadn't done what they did. Nintendo's done some fairly crazy things, but I can't see those two wildly different approaches to the Rainfall games both coming from NCL, at least not in this day and age.

[Chozo Ghost]

I think NOA had the authority to bring those games over. I remember Reggie saying he was going to wait and see how those games did in Europe before he made a decision, and that quote suggests to me that the authority to make that decision was in his own hands. So I don't think it was NCL who forbade NOA to release the game, but rather it was Reggie being a dick.

[Adrock]

/facepalm

[TJ Spyke]

So I don't think it was NCL who forbade NOA to release the game, but rather it was Reggie being a dick.

Or more likely him not wanting to release a game that would lose Nintendo money. It makes zero sense for a company to release a product that would lose them money just because a few fans want it.

[Adrock]

Seriously. Some people are acting like Reggie is out to spite fans. He's employed by Nintendo to make sound business decisions. Reggie made the right call and it wasn't even a difficult one. Those games, as great as they may be, are small potatoes. They're a much harder sell to a Western market. GameStop saw some potential in a limited exclusive release if Xenoblade. Reggie could have nixed that deal but obviously, transferring a bulk of the risk onto GameStop proved to be beneficial to Nintendo.

[Ian Sane]

My beef with Reggie stems from my beef with Nintendo period.  When they started this casual stuff my concern was that the older fanbase would be neglected - the casuals would become the prime focus and we would become an afterthought.

With Xenoblade it felt that NOA, and thus Reggie as well, was doing exactly that.  "Sorry this isn't a sure fire mainstream hit so we don't want to release it."  Even if there is risk of losing money who's fault is it that the Wii doesn't have the core gamer customerbase to support such a title?  Is it our fault in any way?  Maybe if they didn't bork the specs for the casuals and just outright neglect the core gamers that audience would be big enough that this wouldn't be a risky title to release.  To me it's a **** excuse because if the userbase isn't there it's THEIR own fault so why should I, a loyal customer during the lean years of the Gamecube, suffer for it?  Either way they're jerking us around.

[Chozo Ghost]

Xenoblade and those other games are not "small potatoes". There was a whole entire movement and petition signed by thousands of people for those games to be brought over. Xenoblade Chronicles was on the top 10 list for pirated games, with almost a million torrent downloads apparently.

So you say Reggie's job is to not lose money for Nintendo? Well, he did just that. By not bringing those games over money was lost. Much of what ended up being lost to piracy could have been money for Nintendo, if only he had brought the games over sooner.

If thousands of customers start a movement and a petition to get you to do something, then the obvious answer is to do it. Reggie refused to do what paying customers wanted, and for that he deserves to be fired.

[Luigi Dude]

And were was this huge older loyal audience when Baten Kaitos Origin was released at the end of the Gamecubes lifespan and sold less than 20k in North America?  Yes the Gamecube was basically dead, but three months later the Gamecube version of Twilight Princess sold over 500k on it's opening month.

I know Zelda is much bigger than Baten Kaitos, but the point still stands that there was at least 500k people that still had active Gamecube's in 2006, but less than 20k of them bought Origins.  This is why I can't really blame Reggie too much for being a little more concerned because he knows that the internet fans that constantly complain only make up a very small percent of the overall market he's responsible for.

Of course I do feel that if marketed properly, NOA could have did what they did with Dragon Quest IX and Monster Hunter 3 and helped both games do several hundred thousand.  Of course in the case of Dragon Quest and Monster Hunter, NCL had to mandate NOA to help market both games.  But in both cases, since NCL was doing the ordering, had either game failed in North America, Reggie could at least make an argument that he felt the series didn't have any appeal to the market and NCL shouldn't have demanded him to release them.  If Xenoblade was to come out in North America and fail, then the blame would rely 100% on Reggie since he would have made that decision, and he'd have no way of redirecting some of the blame back to Iwata by saying he was against the decision.

[Ian Sane]

And were was this huge older loyal audience when Baten Kaitos Origin was released at the end of the Gamecubes lifespan and sold less than 20k in North America?  Yes the Gamecube was basically dead, but three months later the Gamecube version of Twilight Princess sold over 500k on it's opening month.

Baten Kaitos Origins has an average review score of 77.54% while Xenoblade has an average score of 93.87%.  I'm sure I'll get the "reviews mean nothing" argument but the two games aren't exactly equal in status.  Xenoblade has been called the best RPG of this generation.  Baten Kaito Origins isn't even one of the better Gamecube RPGs and probably wouldn't even have sold well on the PS2.  I have no problem with NOA holding back middling okayish-at-best games with limited appeal.  But Xenoblade is supposed to be REALLY good.  It has to be some sort of incredibly obscure title catering very specifically to Japanese tastes to get this kind of review buzz and be kept in Japan.  But in this case it wasn't even limited to Japan.  Aside from soccer games, typically any game that is fit for release in Europe is fit for release in North America.  The markets are seperate pretty much entirely due to geography as opposed to cultural videogame tastes.

[TJ Spyke]

Xenoblade and those other games are not "small potatoes". There was a whole entire movement and petition signed by thousands of people for those games to be brought over. Xenoblade Chronicles was on the top 10 list for pirated games, with almost a million torrent downloads apparently.

So you say Reggie's job is to not lose money for Nintendo? Well, he did just that. By not bringing those games over money was lost. Much of what ended up being lost to piracy could have been money for Nintendo, if only he had brought the games over sooner.

If thousands of customers start a movement and a petition to get you to do something, then the obvious answer is to do it. Reggie refused to do what paying customers wanted, and for that he deserves to be fired.

People sign petitions for the hell of it, I have no doubt many signed it despite having no intention to buy the game. One of the most pirated games last year was COD: MW3 (which broke sales records), and the torrent list was worldwide (which is why FIFA was in the top 10). Xenoblade is a niche game that was never gonna sell well anyways. The game was never gonna be a blockbuster for them, at most it would make a small profit (and that's if all the people who claimed they would buy it actually did buy it).

[BlackNMild2k1]

Wii U spotted at CES - being shown of on LG's new 55" OLED TV



Tokyo/City demo from E3 that we never saw?