Reggie Fils-Aime – GameCube Taught Us a few Valuable Lessons

This may be a living proof of the saying that life’s best teacher is failure. Newly promoted Nintendo of America President, Reggie Fils-Aime recently spoke about what went wrong with the GameCube (GCN) and the how these valuable lessons are affecting their Wii campaign.

In an interview that could be found in the recent issue of Nintendo Power, Mr. Fils-Aime admitted their shortcomings that resulted to the disappointing performance of the GameCube. When asked about GCN’s initial software lineup, he responded by confessing that the lineup was  not “diverse and strong enough from a first and third-party perspective.” He also implied that the next wave of titles came in a very, very slow pace.

Lesson learned indeed. Now armed with those valuable lessons from the GCN mess, Nintendo adopted a different strategy for the Wii. According to President Reggie, “we (Nintendo) have been sharing information and development tools with publishers since very early on in the process. We have communicated to them why it makes sense to develop for the platform, and why it makes business sense to bring their best current franchises and brand-new concepts to the platform… Those have been our key tools and tactics to make sure that publishers are on board with our strategy.”

The new approach paid off basing from the number of titles present at the Wii booth at this year’s E3, not to mention the positive and warm reception it is receiving from gamers (especially fanboys). The Nintendo Wii Line at E3 was arguably longer than that of MS’s or of Sony’s.

Reggie also mentioned that their Wii games at E3 represented “a very broad range that will meet gamers’ needs…From Metroid Prime 3, Mario Galaxy, and Ubisoft’s Red Steel, the core gamers will be thrilled. With Tennis and WarioWare, we have titles that will reach the masses.”

This just goes to show that there’s nothing wrong with failure as long as you are willing to learn from it. Let’s just wait and see if Nintendo will be able to live up to the standards it’s setting.

This may be a living proof of the saying that life’s best teacher is failure. Newly promoted Nintendo of America President, Reggie Fils-Aime recently spoke about what went wrong with the GameCube (GCN) and the how these valuable lessons are affecting their Wii campaign.

In an interview that could be found in the recent issue of Nintendo Power, Mr. Fils-Aime admitted their shortcomings that resulted to the disappointing performance of the GameCube. When asked about GCN’s initial software lineup, he responded by confessing that the lineup was  not “diverse and strong enough from a first and third-party perspective.” He also implied that the next wave of titles came in a very, very slow pace.

Lesson learned indeed. Now armed with those valuable lessons from the GCN mess, Nintendo adopted a different strategy for the Wii. According to President Reggie, “we (Nintendo) have been sharing information and development tools with publishers since very early on in the process. We have communicated to them why it makes sense to develop for the platform, and why it makes business sense to bring their best current franchises and brand-new concepts to the platform… Those have been our key tools and tactics to make sure that publishers are on board with our strategy.”

The new approach paid off basing from the number of titles present at the Wii booth at this year’s E3, not to mention the positive and warm reception it is receiving from gamers (especially fanboys). The Nintendo Wii Line at E3 was arguably longer than that of MS’s or of Sony’s.

Reggie also mentioned that their Wii games at E3 represented “a very broad range that will meet gamers’ needs…From Metroid Prime 3, Mario Galaxy, and Ubisoft’s Red Steel, the core gamers will be thrilled. With Tennis and WarioWare, we have titles that will reach the masses.”

This just goes to show that there’s nothing wrong with failure as long as you are willing to learn from it. Let’s just wait and see if Nintendo will be able to live up to the standards it’s setting.