EDIT:Will be locking mine then!

DAMN

Older employees retiring, as I hoped and expected. I'm not convinced, as others are, that Iwata is the problem in Nintendo's management. I think Reggie and older hands at Nintendo Japan have been more of a problem, we've no evidence that Iwata is part of, or the entirety of, whatever management failings have taken place over the last few years. I find it strange that someone like Iwata--a relatively young man who has spear-headed some of Nintendo's more forward looking policies--would be the person holding the company back.

Hmm, Iwata the new Nintendo of America CEO ? Could be good !
I think Iwata doesn´t get enough credit for improving Nintendo´s relationship with japanese thirdparties.
If you look back at the end of the N64 era, they had absolutely no japanese support, Square hated them, Capcom was far to busy with the PS2 (and released what? 2 ports on the N64 before),the same was true for Namco Bandai, Atlus,Tecmo Koei etc. Fast forward to 2013: Dragon Quest is Nintendo exclusive since 2006, Monster Hunter (seems to be) and the other third parties are (once again) on board....on the 3DS

Maybe he can do the same for western publishers ? I like him !

I don't quite understand how Iwata becoming NoA CEO translates to more localizations.

Anyone hoping for Iwata's downfall are just, quite frankly, horrible horrible people.

Whether you are a huge supporter of Nintendo or not, there is literally ZERO reason to dislike the guy. Saturo Iwata is the very very RARE case, in this day and age, of a major game company being headed by someone that *gasp* not only used to create games, but is a gamer himself. So unlike 99% of big company head presidents out there, he actually understands not only the product, but the consumer as well. He doesn't need yes-men and focus group analysts to come kiss his butt and tell him what recent trends show consumers allegedly want.

We're talking about the man who helped make Lolo, Kirby, Earthbound, and Smash Bros. for fuck's sake.

But, sadly, much like pro sports, when a team has a spot of trouble, the coach usually gets blamed, even if he has zero control over what's going down. And while I do absolutely think Nintendo as a whole should have had at least a few of those 3DS projects as Wii U projects, as 3DS almost has too many first party games coming recently while Wii U (which needs them) in the last few months has none (namely Luigi's Mansion 2, Paper Mario 4, having Monster Games make a pointless port of DKCR when they should be working on a new Wii U title). I don't however think that he exactly PLANNED for what looked on paper like a fantastic Wii U launch lineup, to have not done as well as expected.

One of the primary things that hurt Nintendo in NA, I believe, is that the original round of commercials for Wii U were atrocious, with craptacular "dubstep" soundtracks, and nonsensical imagery that showed or told nothing to the average consumer about what Wii U really is, and why they should buy one. Whoever was responsible for that commercial in the NOA marketing department should step down, not Iwata. On the same token, I think Reggie has been a good thing for Nintendo overall as well, as while he has a corporate/advertising background, he is also a self-admitted avid gamer, and while he certainly comes off a bit as a "corporate PR guy", which....well, he is, it's also undeniable that when he talks at least about certain games, you can tell that he has genuine enthusiasm for them.

So yup. Iwata's fine. Personally I hope he sticks around as Prez. for a long time to come. He was personally responsible for the mega-success of DS and Wii, and people seem to forget that. He gave himself a pay cut when 3DS initially sold under-par (when he really didn't need to), something I don't seem to remember the presidents of Sony or MS doing at any point. Just saying. The dude just seems like a hell of a guy. Not really sure how you could root against that.

True. Operation Rainfall really did its job. Proud to have supported it. (Though I only did grab Xenoblade. I should really get Last story sometime.)

Because it was most likely from the very top of NOA management that decided NOT to localize The Last Story, for example. NOA makes it's own independant decisions, on what to spend time and money localizing, and what not to. I'm not saying that the guy who got promoted/moved back to Japan is a bad dude. But he is just a businessman, with a background in business. Iwata has a better/clearer understanding of what gamers actually like and want (for example, he was personally responsible for Nintendo aquiring Monolith and them developing, in his own words, Nintendo's answer to Final Fantasy, in Xenoblade, and we see that carrying on in the sequel "X"). I think if he's the one at the top in NOA making final decisions, there is at least a slightly better chance that next time around, we might see a couple (not ALL, but key) titles get leased in NA.