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S.T.A.G.E. on 26 November 2012
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Aielyn said:

JGarret said:

His style of mindless confidence and aggressive promotion was appropriate during the heyday of the Wii. Nintendo had to take advantage of their sudden success with the mainstream market and being a household name with Americans once more. Reggie is a big beefy American guy who looks the part.

These days, Reggie is an ill fit because he looks insincere and deceptive to the tech and geek crowd that Nintendo is once again diverting a significant amount of attention to.

Seriously? Someone actually asserted that Reggie was perfectly suited to selling the Wii to the mainstream market, but he fails to appeal to the tech and geek crowds?

The sheer nonsense of what was said is staggering.

First of all, when Reggie was first introduced, it was done in a way specifically to appeal to the gamers, not to the mainstream market. Since then, Reggie has been Nintendo's "gamer face". NoA always relied on their head of marketing (can't remember who it is now, but at one time, it was Perrin Kaplan) as their mainstream face. Indeed, there's a reason why there are so many memes out there in the gaming community that originated with Reggie or refer to him.

Second of all, even if Nintendo were "diverting a significant amount of attention to" the tech and geek crowd, it wouldn't mean that they should ignore what worked with the Wii in getting the mainstream market's attention. The absurd "it's mainstream or it's for gamers, it can't be both" attitude of gamers is disgusting and elitist in the worst possible sense of the word.

Third of all, Reggie was talking to CNN, so obviously he's going to use broad comments that talk up the system. CNN isn't a gaming site, it's mainstream media. When Reggie wants to sell the Wii U to the gamers, the tech-heads and the geeks, he'll do it via sites like Kotaku, GoNintendo, Gizmodo, Engadget, or IGN, and he'll use comments directed at them, rather than the broader comments made for the mainstream. Don't forget, CoD players are overwhelmingly "mainstream" gamers, people who buy only a few games and are relatively "casual" in the way that they play them.

Finally, Reggie was actually hired as a marketer. That's the whole point of his job. He doesn't run a game-making company, he runs a marketing/distribution subsidiary of said game-making company (they also do things like translation work, but that's just a structural thing). And since Reggie has been on board, Nintendo has been doing far better than before.

One can argue about whether Reggie was lying, or whether Nintendo is taking the right approach in selling the Wii U in general... but the assertions you've quoted above just don't make any sense.


Reggie is a charismatic guy, but he can't fool a gamer. He can fool a casual for sure though and if I was him I would be focused on them because thats where the majority of Nintendos money came from last gen.