Reggie: Fan petitions don’t change what Nintendo does
Nintendo of America boss Reggie Fils-Aime has revealed in a recent interview that the fan petitions and campaigns Nintendo fans run ‘doesn’t effect what we do’.
This rather blunt statement comes in an interview with Siliconera. Reggie was quizzed on Operation Rainfall, the campaign to bring Xenoblade Chronicles, The Last Story, and Pandora’s Tower to the west (specifically North America). While the campaign’s goals were eventually met, the release of the games in North America, it would seem the campaign itself had little effect on Nintendo’s decision in the end.
“I wanted to bring Xenoblade here. The deal was, how much of a localisation effort is it? How many units are we going to sell, are we going to make money? We were literally having this debate while Operation Rainfall was happening, and we were aware that there was interest for the game, but we had to make sure that it was a strong financial proposition.”
Reggie says the decision ultimately is financial.
“I’m paid to make sure that we’re driving the business forward – so we’re aware of what’s happening, but in the end we’ve got to do what’s best for the company. The thing we know [about petitions] is that 100,000 signatures doesn’t mean 100,000 sales”.
So while if you’re really passionate about something and want to run a campaign, this news shouldn’t stop you – just remember ultimately you might be beating your head against a brick wall.
From a business point of view that’s really fair. I work for a business that sells confectionery, I get a handful of customers that want a certain chocolate, that the last time we had, sat on the shelf for ages and so we had to drop the price in half to get it to move before it went past before. Should a company lose money on software to make a handful of people happy? Especially in today’s vicious game market where consoles are forced to be sold at a loss and companies need software to sell to make their money back?
But still, with that logic expressed, I WANT ALL GAMES REGIONALISED, GOSH DARN IT! 😛 Or at the very least, Nintendo should just ditch region locking so we can easily access games from other regions if they not get released in our own.
They should work on streamlining their localisation pipeline so that it is more cost effective.
Or, an official Nintendo Kickstarter-style option for games that fall into this category? If petitions don’t equal sales, then get people to pay for their interest upfront.
Clearly, someone needs to make a device that you plug into the 3DS that can take a game cartridge, that connects to google translate and translates any text that is read from memory on the fly. It won’t look pretty but by god jim it would make my life easier.