Reggie talks about why Kinect failed, and multiple Wii U missteps
The big man shares some new insight
Reggie Fils-Aimé is still out and about promoting his book, Disrupting the Game, which brought him to a special Q&A event in Seattle. Obviously, quite a few people in the crowd had questions about Nintendo and videogames in general for Reggie, and he was more than willing to answer. You can see a summary of what Reggie covered below.
- Reggie said Kinect was good technology, but the content wasn’t there to support it
- Reggie says since Kinect was sold as an add-on, which hurt it
- Reggie said the eventual Xbox/Kinect bundle was too pricey
- Reggie was responsible for the marketing for the Wii U
- Reggie says the Wii U didn’t have a killer game at launch
- Nintendo thought Nintendo Land would be the killer piece of software, but it wasn’t
- Reggie says the pace of Wii U software following launch wasn’t strong
- Nintendo says hitting the Nintendo level of quality on Wii U games took longer and longer
- Nintendo said Nintendo’s proprietary engines just weren’t as good as Unreal Engine and Unity
- Nintendo had a big debate on jumping to other engines and tools instead of using their own
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sligeach_eire
9M agoThat's a lot of mistakes with the Wii U, and these are only the ones Reggie's admitted to, there's far more. At least he's being honest.
"Reggie was responsible for the marketing for the Wii U"
Yikes! The marketing of the Wii U was a complete disaster.
kuribo
9M agoIt’s ok Reggie. Not your fault you were given Fisher Price poop to market. At least the games were good. They’re better on Switch though.
hawk
9M agoNintendoland may not have been the "killer" game Nintendo was hoping for, but it has kept the WiiU plugged in at my house for years after getting the Switch. It has mini games in it that I wish Nintendo had pursued further and made full games out of.
enthropy
9M agoSo, Reggie my boy. You were responsible for the marketing and that marketing was utter garbage. So bad that people didn't even know exactly what it was. But nice try, Mr: PR!
The WiiU was a great console, and still is. Wish more games would have utilized the GP. Some games like SF0, ZombiU, TW101 did some great usage of it. Oh well. I still have mine hooked up and ready to go =)
NintendoLand still gets played by my kids at least once a month. Metroid is the favorite mini-game, but Luigi’s Mansion and Pikmin are also in heavy rotation.
vinlauria
9M agoWii U's marketing was a disaster. Considering how well Reggie handled the marketing of the Wii and Switch, I still can't fathom how he so badly bungled the Wii U's. A great system brought down entirely by completely inept marketing.
ridleysaria
9M agoHonestly I can’t think of much about Wii U that wasn’t a mistake. The most use I got out of it was for watching Netflix while grinding for better guns in Borderlands on PS4.
The positive to come out of it might be that Nintendo had no choice but to admit their way of thinking was backwards. Nintendo likes to do things their own way but needs to keep one foot planted on solid ground. They still make some frustratingly Nintendo decisions but seem to be on the right track now.
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