What if.. Satoru Iwata gets fired by share holders and re-place him with an American.

[fleischr]

Soundwave said:

Another interesting FYI ... Retro Studios exists today largely because Howard Lincoln championed the idea and Yamauchi trusted him.

And Retro was supposed to be a studio that made multiple games too, unfortunately after Lincoln left that idea kinda got thrown away because Nintendo got burned by Jeff Spanenberg and then never trusted Retro with two projects at once ever again.

Lincoln also went to bat for Nintendo to get EA and other third parties to make games for the N64 even though Nintendo's Japanese HQ had hamstrung NOA with the cartridge format. 

Nintendo also branched out by taking chances on developers like Silicon Knights (Eternal Darkness), Left Field (NBA Courtside), and made a partnership for multiple Star Wars games in the 90s. 

To be honest I think Lincoln was a better game exec than Iwata is. Iwata caught lightning in a bottle with touchscreen/Wiimote casual gaming thing for a period of 4-5 years, but he's been mediocre as Nintendo's president for the other 6-8 years of his reign and has reverted Nintendo back to being an isolated Japan-centric company, whereas in the 90s they were far more balanced. 

Retro Studios was pretty much born from Iguana Entertainment -- the developers of the Turok series, one of the great 3rd party successes on the N64.

Iwata's a smart, innovation-centric guy, but he and the rest of the folk around him have difficulty understanding the Western market. They ought to give Reggie and the NOA more autonomy.