18th May 2022, 1:36 PM
(This post was last modified: 20th May 2022, 4:09 PM by A Black Falcon.)
Yeah, I think you've got it there -- it is clear that Reggie's just a marketing guy and always was. They did a great job of selling him as this cool and tough Nintendo guy, but that was obviously just PR.
With that said, I never was a huge Reggie fan -- I'm definitely not the target audience for that 'cool and tough' pitch, to say the least -- but I thought he was alright. This is a lot worse...
Though yes, I should have also mentioned the workplace issues around how contractors were treated at NoA particulalry in the last decade or so. It sounds like it wasn't very good. People who were full employees were mostly fine, but the contractors, clearly not as much. Reggie denies any knowledge of issues, but that doesn't seem very likely, I'd think.
So yeah, not great. The thing is though, remember that for the most part Reggie was just a figurehead, a marketing guy there to sell Nintendo of Japan's decisions to America. The independent NoA of the '80s and '90s was destroyed by Iwata (along with the departures of its leaders) and Reggie was the guy he brought in to be a clear subordinate without prior knowledge of the industry and implement NoA's new focus only on marketing and localization. He mostly did fine at that, I just overall think that the more independent NoA of the '90s was for the most part better.
On the consumer side though, while the loss of independence for NoA has clearly hurt in some ways, compare the network of Western developers Nintendo had on the N64 and to a lesser extent the GC to the entirely indie-focused effort they have now (though the insane volume of indie games on Switch is overwhelming, in both good and bad ways), the last few years -- post-Reggie, the Doug Bowser years -- have been the best ever from Nintendo in one respect, localizations! Until the Wii years, and after to some extent, it was of course the norm for some major titles to only release in Japan, but now we're even getting Famicom Detective Club! It's pretty nice.
But seriously, Nintendo needs to clean up their act and deal with their contractor problem, that is totally unacceptable.
With that said, I never was a huge Reggie fan -- I'm definitely not the target audience for that 'cool and tough' pitch, to say the least -- but I thought he was alright. This is a lot worse...
Though yes, I should have also mentioned the workplace issues around how contractors were treated at NoA particulalry in the last decade or so. It sounds like it wasn't very good. People who were full employees were mostly fine, but the contractors, clearly not as much. Reggie denies any knowledge of issues, but that doesn't seem very likely, I'd think.
So yeah, not great. The thing is though, remember that for the most part Reggie was just a figurehead, a marketing guy there to sell Nintendo of Japan's decisions to America. The independent NoA of the '80s and '90s was destroyed by Iwata (along with the departures of its leaders) and Reggie was the guy he brought in to be a clear subordinate without prior knowledge of the industry and implement NoA's new focus only on marketing and localization. He mostly did fine at that, I just overall think that the more independent NoA of the '90s was for the most part better.
On the consumer side though, while the loss of independence for NoA has clearly hurt in some ways, compare the network of Western developers Nintendo had on the N64 and to a lesser extent the GC to the entirely indie-focused effort they have now (though the insane volume of indie games on Switch is overwhelming, in both good and bad ways), the last few years -- post-Reggie, the Doug Bowser years -- have been the best ever from Nintendo in one respect, localizations! Until the Wii years, and after to some extent, it was of course the norm for some major titles to only release in Japan, but now we're even getting Famicom Detective Club! It's pretty nice.
But seriously, Nintendo needs to clean up their act and deal with their contractor problem, that is totally unacceptable.
![[Image: logo_bos_79x76.jpg]](https://www.tendocity.net/logo_bos_79x76.jpg){kind=logo}