In my opinion ever since Howard Lincoln and Minoru Arakawa left NOA things have really gone downhill for Nintendo of America. Now Nintendo is primarily a Japanese company, but as a worldwide company it SHOULD divide its power internationally. It is better business sense to do so.
lets look at the n64 era, sure there were no cds, but
Goldeneye, Banjo Kazooie, Turok series Exclusive, Rare was with the company, they were signing companies like Silicon Knights. Things were very good.
now it seems as though NOA is nothing more than a marketer and distributer, filled with nothing but YES-People and has no backbone of its own.
Why was Splinter Cell not exclusive? Prince of Persia? Why didn't they make bungie who they are? Why are Rare and SK gone?
The gamecube was filled with lots of exclusives, why is it that they sold poorly?
I remember the numbers of sales on n64, most games sold several millions and that was great. I was always like. Well when they switched to cds they will be so much more profitable. Well it didnt happen. THey stayed the same amount of profit(still more profitable then Sony). When in fact had they sold the same sales with the same profit they would have met inflation.