Remember Disaster: Day of Crisis? If you haven't heard, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime isn't really all that keen on bringing it here. He cited "laughable" audio and doesn't think it's worth $50, as he told IGN. He's going to watch the European numbers and see if it's worth a release.
Now, I'm not entirely sure I'd put Disaster itself very high up on my own list of games to play, but the attitude is quite worrying. It seems to me typical of a worrying trend that becomes apparent when I compare Nintendo of America's release calendar to that of the mother company in Japan. NOA's calendar is populated with the big guns like the Wii titles and anything involving Mario Reggie can get published, of course; but it's utterly missing some of the more interesting—but probably not sales-sensation—material like Skip's Captain Rainbow or Monolith's Soma Bringer.
Nintendo of America wasn't always like this. In the times before its wild success with Wii, the Nintendo-published release calendar had a wide variety of titles, including the aforementioned Skip's own Chibi-Robo and the beautiful bomb Baten Kaitos Origins. They didn't exactly fire up the charts, and some were rough around the edges, but they made GameCube feel a lot more lively than the stale Wii. Now we're lucky to get something that doesn't have a popular mascot that NOA thinks will sell plastered on the front... and sometimes, it seems those mascots are all those titles have going for them.
It makes me sort of wish Nintendo would go back to feeling threatened again, frankly. A touch of desperation, perhaps, rather than having the easy money that rolls into their coffers to lean on. Happily, third parties—not exactly having Nintendo's wild success to bask in—are supplying quite a wide variety of software, but they can't touch the stuff that's got locked up in Japan. But here, now, Reggie apparently doesn't feel the need to supplement his lineup. He doesn't have to; his numbers don't demand it. And that's a shame.
Nintendo of America wasn't always like this. In the times before its wild success with Wii, the Nintendo-published release calendar had a wide variety of titles, including the aforementioned Skip's own Chibi-Robo and the beautiful bomb Baten Kaitos Origins. They didn't exactly fire up the charts, and some were rough around the edges, but they made GameCube feel a lot more lively than the stale Wii. Now we're lucky to get something that doesn't have a popular mascot that NOA thinks will sell plastered on the front... and sometimes, it seems those mascots are all those titles have going for them.
It makes me sort of wish Nintendo would go back to feeling threatened again, frankly. A touch of desperation, perhaps, rather than having the easy money that rolls into their coffers to lean on. Happily, third parties—not exactly having Nintendo's wild success to bask in—are supplying quite a wide variety of software, but they can't touch the stuff that's got locked up in Japan. But here, now, Reggie apparently doesn't feel the need to supplement his lineup. He doesn't have to; his numbers don't demand it. And that's a shame.