I´m not familiar with the inner workings of Nintendo, the communication between their HQ in Japan and Reggie in the NA branch, but from time to time I see people lamenting how every little step NoA takes must be under the watchful eyes of NoJ, and how NoJ dictates everything on how NoA should proceed concerning the U.S. market.

In theory, at least, Reggie/NoA should know the U.S. market better than the Japanese HQ, but the vibe I get is NoJ imposes their will over NoA all the time and might frustrate NoA...is there any truth to this?

Lol this is the question I asked in another Nintendo thread. It will be interesting to see what people think.

They're not "slaves" - they're a distribution arm. They have no real say about development, but they do all of the PR, the advertising, the localisation, the shipping, the local manufacturing deals, and the release date selections. Oh, and they probably also deal with American third parties.

Japan can overrule NoA, but I suspect that they mostly only overrule them in order to make sure a game does get released.

Thinking of NoA as a slave is like thinking of, say, California as a slave of the USA.

I believe that NoA and NoE are more a "Hey! How are going the game market in your country?" than "If you want it, do it" to NoJ. But not "slaves".

Don´t tell that to Texas :p

No they aren't. If they were games like Xenoblade and The Last Story would not have issues getting localized. Iwata was bullish on both titles. If it weren't for NoE, gamers in the North America would have never gotten those games.

they do what NOJ tells them otherwise if they where independent they could just do whatever they wanted

Reggie is incompetent. if he wasn't, then ninty fans wouldn't have needed operation rainfall. Reggie/NOA has no idea wht the ninty fans of america (NFOA) wants.

we want it all!

NOJ rues all cause Reggie is to incompetent. 

SEGA Is a perfect example of what happens when arm is allowed to work independently of the main company and just not now SoA and SoJ have a long history of horribly communication and just disdain for each other. Part of the many reasons Dreamcast died. One of the final games for DC was secretly based on SoJ dislike of SoA.

Long story short company arms should not be allowed 100% freedom.

Actually, what this thread and most allude to, is that NoA has no power.

And honestly, I can completely believe that somewhere between the GC era and the present, the NoA branch has indeed lost some power. They obviously still influence decisions on games and getting developer support, but you sort of got the feeling in previous generations (especially the early N64/late SNES period) that they had a bigger say on getting games developed. Somehow, that seems to have disappeared, as NoA has reverted back to being just the localization and distrubution arm, although given how most of Nintendo's internal development has shrunk this might not be intentional.

Reggie probably didn't have much say in Last Story/Xenoblade because Nintendo pretty much thought that if the games didn't sell in their home country, they likely wouldn't sell well in the US. Take a look at the last few RPGs and RPG like games outside of Pokemon, that they released, the sales weren't great. If Nintendo has released Xenoblade without the good buzz of Operation Rainfall, it might not have gotten the same amount of publicity nor sales.

Does it suck for NoA (and NoE as well) to not have much power in the games they get to release in their territories without getting the main office ok? Yes, but that is business