Reggie Fils-Aime, the president and chief operating officer of Nintendo of America, has been a very busy man recently with the launch of Super Mario Odyssey. A handful of publications got to sit down with him at the launch night for Mario’s latest game. Forbes, being one of them, found out a little more about where Nintendo thought they went wrong with Wii U launch, the yet-to-be-revealed Switch online service and more.
On the problems with the Wii U launch:
Is it fair to say that one of the problems with the Wii U launch is that it didn’t have a big exclusive Zelda or Mario game?
Those titles came. We had Zelda experiences, we had Mario experiences. I would say the key learning was that first, we were not able to simply and directly communicate the proposition of Wii U. We rectified that with Nintendo Switch. The proposition is clear: Home console that you could take on the go, play anywhere with anyone at any time. And then the second key difference was the steady cadence of content. Again, you look at what we’ve been able to accomplish just so far and you compare to the Wii U launch time frame, there’s a significant difference. I would say also the third key difference is something that we did to support our third party business, and that was that we had the Unity and Unreal engines ready to support external development. That made a big difference and allowed Stardew Valley and Golf Story and all of this great independent content to come onto the platform, essentially to just keep reinforcing for the consumer who’s bought in with the hardware that they always have something to play.
On the Switch online service:
Tell me about Switch Online, and the plans for next year and when it becomes a paid service. What, exactly, is that going to look like?
I’m not going to tell you exactly what it’s going to look like. We’ll share more about that next year. But what I can tell you is that our vision is to have a robust online environment that not only provides the mechanism for you to have your multiplayer experiences and matchmaking, those elements are minimum. Our goal is to provide that extra Nintendo twist, and that’s what makes our company historically so effective. We don’t do things the same way everyone else does. We relish being different. We see that difference as an element that makes us more compelling to the consumer. And so having that differentiated experience is what we are focused on and we’ll unveil more next year as we’re closer to the launch of the service.
The interview is a lengthy one with Reggie also mentioning about Virtual Reality, the importance of third-party support for the Switch and you can read it in its entirety here.
They still won’t admit the name killed it. Had they called the Wii U the Switch, it would’ve flew off the shelves.
You think the name was the biggest detriment to the system? That doesn’t address the massive lack of support, not only from 3rd parties, but from Nintendo themselves.
Well said baby.
And so much more too. The Switch feels like a modern piece of tech in your hands while the he Wii U tablet felt like a toy. The Wii U’s asynchronous-style multiplayer games like Nintendoland and the multiplayer in ZombiU never came, The semi-portable gaming tethered to a small radius was awkward at best. It’s Zelda content was just HD ports, and Nintendo loses sales to emulators upscaling those games already. Mario 3D World didn’t have a clear message as to what made it unique (3D? We’ve had that since Mario 64!) The Wii U had a great library but no system sellers while the Switch has had two in 8 months. Unlike the Switch and it’s portability, there was no reason to buy a multiplatform release on the Nintendo console, so no reason for third parties (AAA and indie alike) to support the console. It’s a night and day difference between the two consoles.
Actually, the dumbass name was part of the big problem that coincided with the lacking advertisement issue, thus creating a domino effect that killed the system in a few short years.
What’s a Wii U? Is that an attachment for the Wii? :o (lol)
It’s a fisher priced tablet toy that you can’t even play games more than 15 feet away if you wanted to while taking a shit. lol
Bad marketing was another big issue, but Nintendo could have done a great job marketing the system without having to change the name of the system. The biggest issue with the Wii U was that its own creator didn’t support it.
I think it’s because they took stupid pills and thought since 100 million sellers Wii was a household name, people don’t need to know the updated Console was on the horizon. Also, if the Wii was Wii U from 2006, it would’ve DESTROYED PS3/XB360 the second it came out.
That’s not really true. There was still the fact that it had huge droughts, crappy to design for hardware, they never truly used the gamepad, and other problems that dragged it down. I liked the Wii U, but it had A LOT of problems and changing the name wouldn’t have completely fixed them, tho it would have helped sales.
Well, at least Nintendo learn something from there mistakes. Nintendo Switch is there only chance to be more improve.
My dream for the online service: mouthy big service big updates, and free updates for all there online games, Plus 3 free games every mouth on the side, access to all GameCube and classic games.
My dream is that the paid online would include getting free dlc. Those who don’t pay for the service pay the dlc separate.
Also don’t pay for Netflix also
Free and capitalism don’t go well together. There’s always a place where money needs to be done, there’s always a price to pay, even if you don’t shovel out the $$$. I hope they won’t offer things that matters for free, because it means there will be a catch I’m not willing to pay. 1. Take my dollars, 2. Give me the service, and 3. Leave me alone.
I’m afraid not. Look the Fire Emblem warriors DLC. BoTW dlc. All of them you have to pay.
My dream for the online service is that we get it without delay.
And i though all your dreams was about me……
The typical PR bullshit from Reggie.
Yeah don’t take words from Reggie seriously. A lot of stuff they said Nintendo did the opposite
Reggie knows absolutely NOTHING other than how many units the West will get, and how he will dispatch those units. Anything else, he has no clue about. The Tokyo branch holds the keys to the knowledge. All other branches are puppets, like it or not.
It’s more like listen to Hiroshima the one that took iwata places, since he actually knows what he means and says
Japan>US
@felixgray his name is Kimishima. Hiroshima is a city.
This made my day. lol
You really need to get over you hate boner for Reggie. He doesn’t make the call on what info can and can’t be released. Not his fault.
Not my fault Reggie is just an over-glorified PR guy with the paper title of CEO of NoA. He’s more useless than you are, bub. Least you contribute to Nintendo by actually buying their products. He’s too busy spouting whatever hand up his ass makes him say like the puppet he is. He might as well not even be there at all.
You realize how ridiculous you sound by doing absolutely nothing right? He doesn’t make the calls and just runs the NOA company. It’s not his fault the NOJ has all the power. Grow up and get over it.
One of the most stuck up, self absorbed, Nintendo fans who white knights nearly every single criticism toward Nintendo I have who might as well be a sheep is telling ME to grow up?
Go bug someone else with your Nintendo elitist mentality because all you do when you respond to me is waste both of our time. Or maybe you’re too stupid to do that. That or a troll that gets off bothering people like me.
You know what. No. That’s EXACTLY what you are at this point, Brandy Headache. A freaking troll. A troll that just can’t seem to accept my opinions when you don’t agree with them. Oh wait. According to your Nintendo elitist brain, anyone that dares to criticize Nintendo so harshly doesn’t know what an opinion is & just uses it as an excuse to “shit” all over the company you worship & love. Newsflash, kid. They don’t give a flying fuck about you & only want your money. They are exactly like every other company out there. I hope for your sake you one day realize that, so you won’t worship & love them so blindly & faithfully anymore. And hopefully it won’t be when they’ve finally pissed you off & you finally just snap like Stranga did & become EXACTLY like him & me: cynical as fuck toward Nintendo. Sure Stranga is happy for them right now (Hell! I’m happy for them right now! Of course, you’re too blind to notice that!) but all it’ll take is another E3 2015 to push him away again.
Good Lord. You want some cheese with that whine? Like holy crap. XD Talk about a tantrum! Name calling, play on words a third grader wouldn’t even use, and of course the “elitist” cliche. Man dude, grow up. XD
Yep. Just a troll.
I think I broke Kalas. XD
One last thing, you didn’t break me. I was broken long before I ever had that conversation with you about Splatoon being barebones during it’s first month of release. But I embrace the fact I’m broken. You, on the other hand, are too much of a coward to admit to yourself & others that you are a Nintendo fan elitist, so when I call you those things, you try to shrug them off as name calling or whatever. *shrug* Whatever. That’s your problem, bub. Anyway, it’s now time to finally be the bigger man & walk away. You’ll be proving my point with the elitist & troll comments eventually, anyway, so there isn’t much point to respond to you anymore. Otherwise, I’ll be exactly like you: just repeating the same rhetoric over & over again like a broken record.
Keep name calling all you want bub, I play on multiple systems, not just Nintendo. Heck, my first two consoles were PS1 and PS2. You can name call all you want, but when you’re wrong, you’re wrong.
lol at the video. ^^
I try to add some humor to some of my comments to lighten the mood & ease some people from getting upset over one guy’s opinion. But then you have guys like Brandy up there all so boringly serious because they feel they have to take some stand to white knight the poor victims of our criticisms. Or to protect inanimate objects from hurtful words & insulting nicknames. Always gotta be someone trying to suck the fun right out of this place. *shrug*
There is only one significant difference between the Wii U and the Switch, and it’s that Nintendo is finally giving us the games we want!
Now they just have to give us the features we want ON THE SYSTEM, not through some smartphone, then we’ll be good. Oh & external HDD support for those that honestly could give a rat’s ass about the portable aspect. If we do want to take it with us, it’s as simple as putting an option in the Switch settings that let’s us disconnect the external HDD from the Switch dock before undocking it. PS4 has that option so there is no excuse for why Nintendo can’t add such an option. And if there are any digital games we want to take with us, it’s as easy as transferring a game off the Switch’s internal memory to make room for a different game, onto the external HDD, then transferring the game we want to take with us off the external HDD & onto the Switch’s internal memory.
Actually a few more: Pro Controller, backward compatibility and NO FRIEND CODES.
Oh oh oh oh. You didn’t put the part of Virtual Reality
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/starfox/images/0/01/Andross_SF64.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/310?cb=20130630093915
That part is important.
Lesson learned from Wii U…you call reusing Friend Codes as “lesson learned”? No FC in Wii U was one of the only few good changes from it on top of the Pro Controller which not only feels great but it has the best battery life in any controller; 80 fucking hours is an insane achievement. If only the Switch could last a fraction of that life span; 10% at least.