http://cube.ign.com/articles/594/594834p1.html
GDC 2005: Reggie Talks Revolution
And he also lets us know when we'll see the first footage of the anticipated
Mario 128. Full interview inside.
by Matt Casamassina
March 9, 2005 - Nintendo of America's executive vice president of sales and
marketing Reggie Fils-Aime was on-hand at this week's Game Developers
Conference in San Francisco and IGNcube had the chance to ask him some
questions about Revolution, and the future of the company. Following, our
interview with a man who is known throughout the industry for taking names
and kicking ass.
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IGNcube: Thanks for taking the time to sit down with us today, Reggie. Our
first question is actually one that quite a few readers want to know, which
is, what do you like more: kicking ass or taking names?
Reggie Fils-Aime: I definitely enjoy kicking ass more than taking names. I
think the team at Nintendo would agree. I've done a lot of kicking ass. Both
internally and externally. If you look at externally, we're going to sell
about 2.5 million DS units, so we've kicked a lot of ass all through the
holiday season and on the GameCube perspective, Resident Evil 4 kicked a lot
of ass. So we're happy.
IGNcube: Nintendo previously stated that Mario 128 could be a GameCube
title, and then it suggested that it might instead be for Revolution. Is
Mario 128 for GameCube or Revolution?
Reggie: We're going to answer that question at E3. You know, we at Nintendo
are probably waffling back and forth on what's the best thing to do. Legend
of Zelda is going to be on GameCube. We're going to launch that this
holiday. And there's more to come on what happens with Mario 128.
IGNcube: So we can expect to see something on Mario 128 at E3?
Reggie: Yes. In terms of how we're going to show Mario 128, though, it's
likely that we'll show it in video form more than playable. We have so many
great games in playable form already.
IGNcube: How much control does Nintendo of America have over Nintendo's
North American marketing and advertising campaigns?
Reggie: We do control all of the sales and marketing activity for all of the
Americas. Canada, the US and Latin America. And driving that as an agenda is
what's critical for us and how we add value for Nintendo overall. We
currently represent about 55% of Nintendo's profits. Our objective is to
account for more and more of that and being successful in the marketplace is
what helps us have the flexibility to make that happen.
IGNcube: Some of the specs for Microsoft's Xbox successor were recently
announced. Will Revolution be technically on par with Microsoft's system?
Reggie: Quite frankly, we'll share more of our technical specs at E3. That
said, we believe a stronger CPU and a great graphics card is just the price
of entry. For us, it's all about driving innovation. It's all about driving
an intuitive system. It's all about creating a system that invites both the
core gamer and the casual gamer to play. We think that's what's more
important than what the specs are.
IGNcube: Nintendo's console market share has continued to drop over the last
10 years. Why?
Reggie: We started out with an effective 90% market share, so the only way
we could go was down. My focus at NOA is to figure out how we start driving
up market share up and doing that in an effective way. We think that great
games like the Legend of Zelda on GameCube this holiday is going to help us
do that. And we think great games from our partners, like Resident Evil 4,
help us do that. So our focus is how do we drive market share in this market
place and do it in an effective way, and we're confident that we're going to
be able to do that.
IGNcube: Nintendo has recently partnered with companies like Sega and Namco
to create software such as F-Zero GX and Star Fox Assault. Can we expect
more partnerships like these in the future?
Reggie: We are all about working with the best content providers out there
in the market place. Whether it's what we did with Namco. Whether it's what
we just did with EA in terms of making our franchise characters available
for NBA Street. We're going to be doing more and more of this. Frankly, we
think this is a competitive advantage for us because we have great content.
We also believe that it shows how passionate some of the licensees are to
work with us. We think it's a great formula. In terms of what we're going to
announce at E3, we're going to touch upon some of those partnerships. But
quite frankly, we like to hold those close to the vest until those products
are ready to launch, so you'll probably be seeing more of that toward the
end of the year.
IGNcube: Nintendo seems intent on downplaying the role of technology in
videogames. However, you cited both Resident Evil 4 and the new Legend of
Zelda as great examples of outstanding GameCube software and both of these
titles are technology driven. They push the system to its limits. Is this a
Nintendo contradiction?
Reggie: We are passionate about having great technology. Look at Nintendo
DS. Two screens. Touch screen. Voice activation. Your visitors to your site
are just going to love Nintendogs, for example. Makes great use of voice
activation. Has huge AI capabilities. So we are always a technically savvy
company. What we are trying to communicate is that technology is not enough.
It's all about innovation. It's all about providing the gamer with a great
experience. We think our competitors go overboard on technology and don't
provide enough innovation in the gameplay. We think that it needs to be the
other way around.
IGNcube: What's your E3 message?
Reggie: It's going to be hard to top what we did last year. It was a
fantastic E3 for us. The way we're going to do that is we're going to have
great product. We're going to have some great new things to share - some
surprises. And we're going to be talking about what's going to make Nintendo
successful over the next 12 to 18 months. We're going to deliver that
message in a fun and provocative way. So stay tuned! Make sure you guys are
watching our E3 briefing.
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