Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Reggie Fils-Aime Joins Us! - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: May 3, 2022

Go to http://expressvpn.com/kindafunny to get an extra 3 months free. Go to http://chime.com/kfgames to get started with Chime. Go to http://babbel.com/kindafunny to save up to 60% off your subscription. The legendary Reggie Fils-Aime jois us to talk about his book, his time and Nintendo, and where he sees the video game industry as a whole.  Follow Reggie: https://twitter.com/Reggie Epic Creator Code: KindaFunny Follow The Kinda Funny Gamescast Team On Twitter: Tim Gettys: https://twitter.com/TimGettys Greg Miller: https://twitter.com/GameOverGreggy Andy Cortez: https://twitter.com/TheAndyCortez Blessing Adeoye: https://twitter.com/BlessingJr Barrett Courtney: https://twitter.com/SadBoyBarrett Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Y'all are about to see an amazing interview with the legendary Reggie Fies-A-May. But that's not all for the Kind of Funny Games cast this week. Later on this week, we're going to be doing another episode with the full Patreon post show and all of that. And while you wait for that, if you're on the Epic Game Store, remember to use our Epic Creator Code, Kind of Funny, onto the interview. What's up and welcome back to the Kind of Funny Games cast where each and every week we get together to talk about video games and all the things that we love about them. Of course, I'm Tim Geddes.

by Game Over Gregy himself. Greg Miller. Hello, Tim. And joining us today is Forbes 30 under 30, aka the Game Awards Future Class, aka the new face of video games blessing at Ayoje Jr. Hello, Tim. And joining us as well is the Texas Street Latino Heat clicking heads and ripping them to shreds,

the globe trotten headshotten, Nitro Rifle from Twitch.tv, Andy Cortez. Tim, I had a salad for lunch. I'm feeling great. I am very, very proud of the salad watch continues. Oh yeah, baby carrots and cucumbers have the whole nine yards. It's what he does. Don't worry, bless, don't worry about it.

Is this a thing? Is that a thing people do? I've never had a salad with baby carrots in it. That's some fun to your salad. Reggie, you putting baby carrots in a salad? You know, I'm just watching all this and saying, you know, I don't even eat salads anymore. You guys are just so over the top here.

This is the crunch that it would add the salad. Yeah, it's a good texture. I love it. Yeah, yeah. And you know, I got to get to it before we go on too long with this salad talk. Of course, as a born and raised Nintendo fanboy through the good, the bad, everything in between. It is my complete and utter honor to welcome you and welcome to the show, the former president of Nintendo of America, Reggie Fisimae, and more importantly, the author of his new. And thanks to all of you out there, soon to be New York Times bestselling books disrupting the game coming out May 3rd, Reggie Fies and May. Well, thank you for that fantastic introduction. You know, the, looking forward to this conversation,

looking forward to talking about games, talking a little disruption, talking just everything that's going on. So thanks for having me on. My first question for you, Reggie, is how is retirement? And is it more work than work used to be? You know, so a good friend gave me some advice when I retired. said, Reggie, you're not the type to just sit around, put your feet up. So go figure out what you love to do and find ways to do it with people that you enjoy spending time with. So board service, giving speeches, sitting down, writing this book. It's all things that I have tremendously enjoyed, but it's not retirement in a typical sense. So it's fun. I'm having fun. What is the book for those that don't know? So disrupting the game from the Bron.

to the top of Nintendo. You know, in the genre, they call it a business memoir. But to me, what it is is a series of stories that are punctuated with lessons, principles, things that the reader or the audiobook listener should take away from the book and hopefully apply to their own situation, whether they're a student, whether they're a podcaster, whether they're a business person, whatever the case may be. but just some lessons that I've learned the way in my, you know, 60 plus years of life, 40 plus years as a business executive. That's the book.

And hopefully people will find it a bit inspiring, a bit peak under the tent at the world of Nintendo and some of the other brands I've worked in. But more than anything else, I really hope people take something away that they could apply to their everyday life. You know, one of the things that I think is so cool about you is that you are, one of the few legends in the video game space. Like your name is synonymous with what video games are to anybody that take it even one step deeper than just I've played a video game once in my life. Because I feel like anyone out there that's played a video game, you make a choice. You're either a gamer after that point or you're like, this isn't for me. Right.

And if you decide to go down that path, like you eventually start to realize how deep it all goes. And there's only a handful of names that everybody knows. And Reggie is one of them. And being associated with Nintendo, a company that, you know, is so obviously well regarded over time as like almost the Disney of video games, what was it like to be not only the face of that, but to now be what will always be looked back at in 30, 50, 100 plus years as one of the first legendary figures of this industry. You know, so for me, I was a video game player before I was a video game executive, right? And so for all of the people who loved to play video games, I was just like you. I was, you know, playing my first games on the early, early systems, but my own first personal system was SNES.

And so playing all of those great games, you know, I had almost 80 games for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, had some similar number on N64, had a PS2, had an original Xbox. So I came into this industry, having played a wide range of games on a wide range of different systems. And so for me, making that transition to be a Nintendo executive,

I had credibility. I knew the content. From an outsider's perspective, I had a sense of the industry. I had a bunch of different ideas that I thought needed to be implemented to move the business forward. So for me, it was the right opportunity at the right time

with the right amount of background and information that I had just from loving games and playing games. To be thought of as a singular personality in the video game industry is, on one hand, overwhelming. And it's because, you know, for me, without the creativity of Shiguro Miyamoto, without the business acumen of Satorawada, who knows? I probably wouldn't have lasted in the video game industry for over 15 years.

But to be part of Nintendo's legacy, to be part of the industry's legacy, certainly is a tremendous honor for me. You mentioned growing up with games and playing a lot of games, being a gamer before you actually worked in the industry. Can I ask, do you have a favorite game? So my favorite game, five years ago, if you would have asked me that question, favorite game, Legend of Zelda's linked to the past. That's a game that enthralled me that I played for hours and hours and hours, went back and

replayed it as Nintendo made it available on other systems. But now, my favorite game is Breath of the Wild. And, you know, it is a game that I go back to about every six months to pick it back up and to explore a little bit more. that game, I can't tell you how many hundreds of hours I've put into. Have you been playing any games recently? Because if you bring up Breath of the Wild, I feel like the conversation back when that came out a couple of years ago was this is a transformative experience that we haven't really seen

since things like Ocourine of Time relating to the past. Zelda seems to be tied to this a lot. But Eldon Ring nowadays, are you a FromSoft guy or have you given it a shot? So Love, From Soft, Love. Eldon Ring. But I'll tell you, one of the big differences for me now in the activities I do, I play a lot more games pre-launch, games that are in development, games from well-known studios, game from independent studios. I'm playing a lot more pre-release software than I ever did at Nintendo. And so that sucks up time for me playing Eldon Ring or playing other content that's out broadly

available today. So it's a really interesting time for me. Yes, I still dabble with all of the current stuff, but I play a lot more of content that's still early in development. Was that sort of your first thing post-retirement? You know, you retire. It's like, all right, I'm going to go to all the other game developers and just like, let me try it all. Like now I'm kind of like free to do this. It was, you know, the opportunity to play a wider range of content, certainly was something I enjoyed and continued to enjoy in my retirement. But make no mistake, when I was with Nintendo, I played all of the content from all of the existing platforms. You had to to understand where the market was going and what was hot and what could move the player.

So you mentioned, go for it, plus. I'll say, well, to go back to the link to the past is the answer. You know, I think that's fun because obviously you played that before you ended up at Nintendo. Was that always the goal for you? Did you want to always work in the games industry? Did you know you wanted to work at Nintendo? Or is it happening to the same? So like, yeah, I loved Link to the Past.

Now I work. I know you were at Pizza Hut before, right? Like, was there always a thought of you wanted to end up at Nintendo in the games industry? No. Yeah, it was. And it's interesting because I talk to a lot of young people today and they're fixated. Oh, I want to get into the video game business. I want to do this.

I want to do that. You know, for me, it really was a situation. where, you know, my capability, all of the things that I had done in business and in life, came together with a recruiter's call to interview for the executive vice president of sales and marketing job at Nintendo. Once the opportunity came, you know, I certainly grabbed it and drove it. But it was not a situation where I was sitting back thinking, you know, this is what I want to do with my life. I was fortunate to work in a range of great industries, you know, beer, pizza, TV and entertainment, touching on music. And it was just, you know, my, my capability

meeting the opportunity of, of Nintendo that brought it to life. Did those skills translate? Like, was there stuff that before getting to Nintendo, you'd learn from other industries that you're able to bring in when you did join Nintendo? Absolutely. What translates is, you know, a maniacal focus on the player or the consumer. What translates is how you think about innovation. How do you think about providing things that are new and different? How do you surprise people with products that they never thought could actually be delivered to them in some way, shape, or form?

People management skills, all of these types of skills were translatable to Nintendo. And I would argue they're translatable to just about any industry. And that's, if you don't mind me, jumping in here where I want to. want to go is that yesterday, because of the Easter holiday when we're recording, we got delayed copies of the book. We booked you a while back, but we finally got it. We got our copies yesterday. And I was very much of the, all right, cool, I'll skim it. I'll have some questions. I'll, you know, feeling again, blah, blah, blah. I ended up finishing it. And it never felt like homework. And I was so impressed with the book for the top of the chart. And even if you weren't

here, I would just say, like, it's a great read everybody should get. And there's so much to go into but where we're at right now in the conversation of all these places you worked which i had no idea i thought it was you know you were a pizza you came here i didn't realize it was pepsi proctor gamble derby giddis v h1 the list goes on but what i found so impressive about it is at the top of the thing you said it was a business memoir and for me i'd heard oh it's a memoir i was thinking it's going to be this you know autobiography your your career and how you went through it for me the book smacks so much of like something like creativity ink where it is as you write and tell these stories. And again, I want to honestly, thank you for being so honest. You talk about

your relationship with Mr. Awada. It's how you start the book, right, with him being sick. You talk about your own journey with your family. You talk about your career. You talk about your mentors. But when you go into these sections that you call the so what, you tell this story, then there's the so what, which is like the snapshot of the lesson we just learned or what you took away from it. You're talking about these principles and ideas being able to be applied anywhere, whether you're at Nintendo Proctor or Gamble or being a journalist or doing whatever, being podcasters, whatever you do for the daily life. That's what I love about the book is the fact that it sure it's a memoir, but it almost

reads like self-help. It almost reads like you're trying to give me this toolbox to go through and, you know, be able to use your lessons in a way that I thought was just incredible. Well, thank you for that. That really touches me. And I say this because, you know, everything I've tried to do in my life, I try and do it with a purpose. I try and do it in a way that's different, hopefully better than what's been done before. And when I thought about writing this book,

I went and read a number of other people's business memoirs. I read Shoe Dog by Phil Knight. I read the Eisner book. I read all of these business memoirs. And each one felt to me to be two books smushed together. It was the memoir part, right? So here's where I am. Here's what I did. Here's how I grew up. And then it was the business lessons part. And what I wanted to do was to create a book that was, if you will, a whole piece of cloth. Yes, I'm telling stories. I'm telling stories that punctuate a key business lesson or a key principle. And I highlighted and I demonstrate it. And I hopefully, help the reader understand why I'm sharing this, the so what of the story, so that they could take and apply it. And, you know, I hope that's a key innovative part of the book. I really do hope, just as you dig, Greg, that people take that away and say, wow, this is, you know, this is really meaningful for me to apply moving forward. Hopefully, that's the innovation and the disruption that I've brought forward with this book. Well, even the way you talk about the perfect memo. You know what I mean?

Like, I haven't written a memo in a long time, but I write a lot. in the way you boil it down. I'm like, what you're trying to do? I'm like, oh, that's actually is helpful for as many pitch documents as we write and things like that. Like, if I can get something out of this, anybody can get out. The main question I had, though, closing it, the question I have is,

did you ever forgive your son for beating the Legend of Seldda link to the past? Because there's a great story in here, like he's talking about. He has the S&E,S. He loves Mario World, but then Zelda comes around and changes everything. And I think it's you stay up until three in the morning, but you get to the final boss and you're like, I'm going to destroy this the next day.

and your son got on your save file and you heard him cheering as you came through the front door. I was like, oh, my God. So I did forgive him, especially when I was stable to him since. Especially when I was able to play. I went back and played Link to the Past, you know, when it was digital content available probably on the Wii. And so I finally got to finish it.

And I finally got to see the end credits, which I never saw because I didn't get to see that in the original. But what's the great button to that story is I told that story at Entertainment Software Association dinner where Shiguro Miyamoto was being honored with some lifetime award. So I'm in front of a thousand people. I'm telling the story about how Miyamoto touched people, touched me before I was even a Nintendo executive and how this story, this game was a second job for me, as I think. played it every evening and this touching story with my son beating the game and I never got the chance to beat it, if you will, for the very first time. I get back to our table and Miyamoto turns to me and he says, Reggie Son, is that a true story? And it's like, of course it's true. This is,

you know, this was my life back in the 90s. I was playing all your great content. Yes, I finally, I finally forgave my son, but now he has had to live through, you know, he's. You know, he's, you know, hearing me talk about this story in a variety of different places now committing it to paper in the book. Reggie, you've had a career filled with successes just kind of all across the board. Were there any games that you truly believed in that just didn't quite hit the mass market like you really wanted or hoped for it too? Been a few. Metroid Other M. I don't know if you remember that game.

Metroid game. Remember me? You know, I really thought that that was going to be a defining moment for the Metroid franchise. It was giving much more of a perspective about Samus. I really thought that was going to be a killer moment in the franchise history. And it wasn't. It didn't deliver, not the business results. It really didn't touch the player the way we hoped it would.

And, you know, interestingly, I was in a large group meeting, a strategy meeting with Awada and Miyamoto and the game developers. And we talked about why not. And, again, I was always the brash American. I was the one who would say kind of, you know, what I believed, was truth to try and help the business move forward. And the point I made to the developers was, you know, it took too long to get into the meat and potatoes of this game. You know, the first five hours of the game, you kind of plotted along.

There wasn't a lot of payoff. There was a lot of dialogue. And I'm sure I pissed people off in the room. But I said, you know, you know, the learning here is the player wants to get into this much faster. Yes, there are elements we need to do from a tutorial standpoint, help them understand the game mechanics, but you need to move things further along much quicker.

And hopefully that advice had a little bit of an impact on the developers in the room. On the opposite end of that question, actually, I want to ask, is there a game that came out that got a way bigger reception than you thought it would while working on it. You know, there are always games that surprise. I have to say we fit for the magnitude of sales

and how the sell-through happens so quickly. I have to say that that was a surprise. And again, you have to step back and remember this was essentially a $100 game because it came with the balance board. You know, for the more active player it was a bit of a tough sell. So we really had to expand the audience

and get people to not only commit to $100 game, but potentially even to buy the hardware. So the sell-through and the pace of sell-through on that game was surprising. And it's not to say that I didn't know it was great, it was entertaining, and something that would do well, but the pace and the ongoing sell-through of that game was just phenomenal. It certainly surprised me.

It seems like one of those perfect places, perfect time sort of moment that can only happen if all the stars align. I was working at Best Buy at that time. And good Lord, the amount of questions we got about the Wii Fit and like, no, we've been out of stock for a week and a half. We'll have a new shipment coming in. Like, it does seem like that is one of those games that just for whatever reason, kind of similarly to Animal Crossing at the start of the pandemic, kind of just having this explosive moment. I feel like that was the same for WeFit at that time. I think absolutely. And part of it was while we committed to produce huge, huge quantities, but because it was packed along with this piece of hardware, the supply chain was always a bit challenged.

And that piece of software was immediately selling out probably for the first two years that was available. Did that impact a lot of what Nintendo did after? Because I know, like, on the switch, they have ring fit. And I've been messing around with Wing Fit a lot in the last couple of weeks. And using it, like, buying it, it was more expensive than a traditional game. I think it was around $80 when I got it on Amazon. And using it, like, I didn't have much experience with Wii fit. I did love the Wii back in the day, but, like, We fit.

I was young. I didn't really have use for it. Now, you know, playing RingFit Adventure, I've been blown away, one, by how fun it is, how well designed it is. And then also, like, how good of a workout that I'm getting. Like, doing the post workout, like, check your pulse. put my thumb to the reader and it actually like checks my pulse for me. That is stuff that has blown me away because I didn't even know that was a function on the

switch. And I'm sure like, you know, between now having ring fit in the modern era and having Wii fit back then during the Wii, like, is there is there more stuff from that end that like Nintendo has tried to double down on in terms of fitness and video games that spawned from Wii fit? I think what you'll always see is Nintendo wants to get as many people picking up their hardware, their software is possible. So what you're going to continue to see from the company is certainly just a push to get

what you will call a non-traditional gamer to be playing the system. I think with the latest sports collection coming from the switch that speaks to Wii Sports, I think that's another play to continue expanding the audience, right? For sure. Shout to Chime for sponsoring this episode. No one likes waiting on a paycheck, especially when you've got bills due. Good thing there's Chime. Now you can get your paycheck up to two days early with direct deposit.

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You can get an extra three months of ExpressVPN at ExpressVPN.com slash Kind of Funny. That's ExpressVPN.com slash Kind of Funny. E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N-F-N-Foney. Going back to the Metroid other M conversation. I remember watching that E3, as was a ritual for me and my friends, getting together, watching all the conferences, and kind of just freaking out, marking out to all the announcements being made. That E3 from Nintendo specifically, as a board and raised Nintendo fan,

meant so much to me, because it was the same E3, we got Metro to the REM, with the Team Ninja reveal, we got Super Mario Galaxy 2. It really felt like a, I just got chills even saying it right now. It's such a like not just return to form, but it felt like such a big moment for Nintendo. And, you know, other end turned out to be what it was. But at that time, we didn't know that yet. So we just thought it was going to be something super spectacular.

And on the other side, Mario Galaxy 2 ended up being something truly special, not just as a video game, but as a first time sequel to a Mario game since the original NES, that we got a sequel in the same style of what we've seen before with those expectations, kind of being met, what were the decision-making factors for Galaxy 2 happening as an idea? Because that just seems so foreign and even going forward from that. And I kind of want the insight on what that could relate to like a Mario Kart. Seeing Mario Kart 8 being such a dominant force in the industry for the last decade almost at this point in its different iterations on our different news shows, we are constantly talking about

why wouldn't they do a Mario Kart 9? The sales are so high, like the audience is there. I wonder if there's a connective tissue between those ideas and if you have any insight to that. Well, look, what I can share is this. And, you know, this is philosophical commentary that I've given in the past during interviews. So I'm not breaking any rules, sharing anything out of school.

Yeah. So, you know, first, you know, Nintendo's philosophy is that they want to share one great experience per franchise on every system, meaning they want to have a great Mario platformer on a new system. They want to have a great side-scrolling Mario. They want to have a great Zelda experience. They want to have a great Metroid experience. That's their philosophy. They don't always execute against that. And sometimes they overdeliver.

Sometimes there might be two platforming Mario games on a particular platform. So that's always the mentality. And the success of Super Mario Galaxy absolutely begat Galaxy 2 because the company saw that, wow, this mechanic was really positively received. The developer on that was Mr. Koizumi, so it gave him kind of that next piece of work to push forward on. That's the way Nintendo thinks about game development. So, you know, when you think about a Mario Kart 9 or some future Mario Kart experience, again, their mentality is we want to do a great novel experience on every platform.

Mario Kart 8 really was a Wii U game that was added to for the Switch. So conceptually, they're probably working on a Mario Kart 9. But they won't release a Mario Kart 9 until they figure out what's going to be new, different, compelling, what's going to move the franchise forward? Because that's what they want to do on every iteration. So, you know, from a fan's perspective, and now I'm purely a fan. Everything I've worked on has come onto the marketplace. in the three years that I've been retired. So like everyone else, I'm waiting to see what is going to be that next great Mario

Cart invention. What's going to be so new and unique, hopefully, in that dedicated Metroid experience? That's the way they think about it. That's what fans hope for. I really hope that some of the last things and decisions you made, and you can blink if this is true or not blink twice if it's true. Link's Awakening remake, Oracle of Ages, Oracle of Seasons. Like that game was just such a delight.

It was so cute. And it came out of nowhere. Like that, I remember that direct being so surprised by the fact that this Game Boy game is getting a re-release in this gorgeous 3D style with this amazing sort of tilt shift. And like, what a amazing concept and an easy win, really, bringing something that's so beloved like Link's Awakening to this sort of. of newer forum and this newer console. Oracle of Ages, Oracle of Seasons.

I hope that that was your last directive. Before you clopped out of the day, you said, do this. You know, but what's so interesting is, you know, Link's Awakening, you know, when that was announced, there were a lot of, you know, passionate Zelda fans that were kind of shaking their head. It's like, so why redo this? You know, if you're going to, if you're going to go back and remake, a classic game. Why this one from that era? Oh, and the look is a little different. You know,

it was one of these that I think it wasn't until the players really got their hands on it, really explored it, really saw how it all worked together, that they recognized that, yes, once again, you know, the company had made a great decision in bringing this, and bringing this game back and doing a true full remake. You mentioned being, in the same place as us in terms of anticipating like, okay, what is the next Mario Kart going to be? Or when are we going to get it, going to get it, right? And like kind of being in that place of anticipation for future stuff.

Besides Breath of the Wild, too, is there a project from Nintendo that you are most anticipating? Certainly, like every player, I'm waiting for, you know, all of the new tidbits that could be shared for that next breath of the wild. In terms of other great content, there are things that I want to see. I want to see what is that update on Metroid Prime. I want to see what that is going to look like and how that is taking shape. You know, I want to see other older franchises with a new look. I'd love to see something with Kid Icarus and a new direction there.

So, yeah, I'll take it. at all? Earthbound. Oh, how long did it take until Earthbound and the mother franchise came up? You know, don't hold your breath. Again, I'm not there. I don't know what's going on. I'll share a little bit.

And this is actually in the audiobook bonus content that I did with Jeff Keely. We talk a little bit about the mother series. And while Mr. Owada was alive, he really understood. the passion that fans had for the Mother series. And you need to remember that it was under his watch that Earthbound Beginnings was first brought onto the virtual console platform. And so the company knows that there's a lot of passion for that franchise. But thinking about how to make it current,

thinking about how to make it bigger than just the, you know, let me call it the relatively small group of fans that desperately want to see Mother 3 or something next in the Earthbound series. That's what the company, I'm sure, has been thinking about, and they just haven't figured out yet the solution to that, or at least they haven't been prepared to talk about it. Is there a game in the classic Nintendo Library that hasn't been around for a long time that you think is primed for coming back? Boy, you know, I'd have to literally sit down and think about all of those great franchises.

I mean, that's one of the things that people really don't understand. You know, the company has some 40, you know, plus different franchises that every once and again, they go back and dust off and bring forward, as well as relatively newer franchises that they're constantly playing around with. So I'd have to sit back and really think about what is a game that I'm missing that I'd love to see done for current day and with a, you know, with a, you know, with a. current message. You're showing a little Donkey Kong. You know, the team. Very subtle, very subtle, very subtle, a subtle little message. You know, it's been a while since we've seen a brand new Donkey Kong and a brand new take, but who knows? You know, like a fan, I'm just waiting. Jumping in here, like, this is a loaded question. I'm just going to say a lot of things. I just want you to answer however you take it, however you feel is right. So, like,

Nintendo is a very Japanese-first company, and I feel like it's been that way for a long time. You being the president of Nintendo America, from the kind of media side, we know what it's like to deal with the Japanese companies versus the Western companies and all of that. As we cover this next-gen idea

and wherever we're at now, the console wars, all of it, there's the conversation of what PlayStation's done, what Xbox has done, services versus hardware versus software. Where do you think Nintendo lies now? And how does it differ from when you were really actively in it? And does that all matter at all? And do you ever see Nintendo kind of adopting the kind of methodologies of the others?

Or are we in a place where everyone's doing their own thing? So I'm going to break your question down and answer it in two parts. First, you know, Nintendo is not a Japanese company. Nintendo is a very unique, you know, Nintendo. is headquartered in Kyoto, which makes the culture and the personality of the company very different than, you know, say, Sony headquartered in Tokyo. I think you just have to step back and say the company is unique. It thinks about its business through its own lens.

I was fortunate in my time there to partner exceptionally well with Situro Wada, with Shigura Miyamoto, with the entire leadership there. And it was a moment in time where myself, a handful of other people, were able to bring other perspectives that helped the company have significant success during that time frame. So it's not just a Japanese-oriented company. It's a very unique culture that pulls its influences from a variety of different places. The second part of the, go ahead. No, go for it.

So the second part of the question around, so look, what's the future? Where does it go from here? So I'll answer the question, not from a Nintendo or Nintendo executive perspective, but I would argue where this industry is going is much more towards. a software-first, content-first, franchise-first type of environment. And this is where, you know, if I'm thinking about a breakthrough vision in the games industry, I'm much more in a software service, you know, deliver content over an extended period of time, a variety of different franchises.

I like the GamePass model of what Microsoft has been able to do. And arguably, if there's a company that could do the quote-unquote Netflix of games type of model, it is Nintendo, right? Given all of the legacy content, plus given their focus as a content creation company with all of those wonderful franchises. That's where I would go. And especially as 5G is more applied on a global basis, as in-home Wi-Fi games, it's better and better and better because that's where the problem is, right? The latency in that last 500 yards into the consumer's home, once that's solved, you know, a pure digital internet connectivity type model,

I think is where this business can go. And charging a consumer $20 a month to have an all-you-can-eat library of games, I think is the model of the future. We don't have much more time with you. I do have a couple more hard-hitting questions that I have for you. And you can pass if you don't want to answer them. If you have a good answer, I'd love it. But I got to at least try my best here.

So you are a legend of the industry. I opened this talking about that. There are very few out there. There's the Miyamoto's, there's the Kojima's. We put the Regis up there, right? I would even put the Bill Trend is up there personally. But are there people that you feel aren't getting that type of conversation but deserve it? I think that the next round of conversations we need to have are around those game developers

who have developed content across a variety of different platforms, variety of different genres. I think that's where the next, let me call it, superstars of the industry are going to be. And those are going to be the names we're going to talk more about versus folks like me, the suits, the business. this guys, I think we need to focus on the creators and giving the creators much more credit than they've had to date. And then the second one, this is probably the one you might want to back off of, but I got to ask it. Is there anything crazy that you can reveal?

Is there any canceled game that the world doesn't know about that you just want to tell us about here at the Kind of Funny Gamescast? No. You know, and I say this because, again, It comes back to, you know, what's my intention today? What is it that I'm trying to do today? You know, my intention is not to share, you know, the deepest of dark secrets from Nintendo

or the air the dirtiest of laundry. I have no desire to be playing that game. What I'm trying to do in my retirement is I want to help as many people achieve their potential, whether that's being a business leader, whether that's being a great creative talent, whatever the case may be, I'm trying to help that next generation

be the very best they can and achieve as much as they can. And so for me, it's much more of a positive message. It's much more focus on sharing these principles and these skills and these capabilities versus telling all of those negative stories and whether they're from Nintendo, whether they're from P&G

or whether they're from anywhere else in my past. All right, now to close out the show, I got two more for you. I lied to you. One, I want Greg to ask a question, and then I'm coming back for the hardest-hitting question I've asked you at Greg, go for it.

Reggie, so the book's disrupting the game out, May 3rd. As I said, I find the book incredibly inspirational. I love hearing your stories and what you learn from them. The one thing, though, is you are now sitting in your ivory tower while you give this advice. no skin in the game. My question, you call it disrupting the game, and I really think your disruption

and what you talk about and how you were a disruptor comes into view in the Nintendo stuff, right? Where they're interviewing you, and you're like, well, I want to have a meeting with a water, and they're like, nobody does that. And then it's the same thing of like when they tell you, you know, they don't believe in the people stuff.

And like, you came in and changed that and shook that up. Was there ever a point in any of your job, but Nintendo specifically, I guess, where you were afraid you were going to disrupt yourself out of a job? Like, how do you, for people who are reading this book and taking this advice and want to take those chances, right? They want to drive change. How did you get over that? Absolutely. I constantly thought that I was going to disrupt myself out of the job. I constantly thought that, you know, there's a day where I'm going to be fired. And I talk about one of these stories in the book.

You know, the 2006 E3 presentation. So this is where we're showing off the we, we're showing off the we're showing off Wii Sports were showing off a finished Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess. And at the time, Nintendo would do two live events. In the morning, we would do a press event. And it was all about getting, you know, the jaded press on board with what it is that we're trying to do. And then in the afternoon, we would be talking to our retailers. And that's when we would be looking to get the retailers excited to,

place bets and place orders and to show their support for the company. And in that morning press briefing, we closed the event with Wii Sports. Earlier, we showed a little bit of footage and gameplay for Twilight Princess, but we closed the show with Wii Sports. And it was a huge hit because, you know, the press was blown away by the way you could wave the Wii Remote and play tennis. Right after that event, Mr. Awada came to me and he wanted to change how we would close the show for the retailers, where it was established that we were going to close the show with Legend of Zelda, because that was the big hit. That's what was going to drive hardware sales from the retailer's perspective.

and he wanted to change how we would do that event. And I held my ground and I argued that we shouldn't do it. We shouldn't do it so late it can create all types of risk of things that could go wrong. And for the retailers, they needed to be sold on Zelda. Plus, also in that audience were all of our publishing partners. And we needed EA and Activision and all of our retail publishing partners. to see that we could create an audience for their more traditional style of video games. And this was an argument.

And it was an argument in private between the two of us, but it was an argument. And in the end, he relented and we closed the show with Zelda. And in the end, it was a massive hit. Well, we get word. E3 closes on a Friday. We get word on a Monday that Mr. Watt is coming down. back to the US wants to speak with me, then he's going to speak with the rest of the leadership team.

I was convinced he was coming back to fire me. I was convinced that I had pushed back one too many times, that I had been that disruptive, argumentative, pushy American one too many times, and he was coming back to fire me. And I walked into a meeting with him and my direct boss at the time, Tatsumi Kimoshima, with a PowerPoint deck looking to convince him and potentially stave off my firing that we had done the right thing and the way we had executed that E3.

Well, lo and behold, that's where I was promoted to president and chief operating officer. He came back in order to deliver that promotion. But I was convinced I was going to be fired. I'd push back one too many times. If you like that story, there are so many of them in there. You got to get this book. Again, Reggie, I want to thank you again for being so open and honest about it. Like, your relationship with Mr. Awata is so special, and you capture that in the book, and it's very beautiful.

Thank you for that. And, of course, that book is disrupting the game. Coming out, May 3rd, you can get it everywhere. And everyone out there, we got to get it to the New York Times bestseller of this. We got this, baby. Let's go all the way to the top. We're doing it. But the final question to let you go, Reggie.

It's the hard-hitting one. I got to drop it on you. If you could cosplay as any video game character, who would it be? Come on, that's easy. I'd cosplay as Link. That is fantastic. That is fantastic. But may I suggest one other option for you?

Because I feel like you got it down. Barrett, please bring it up. We got Brock from Pokemon here because right now, you are already rocking the outfit. And it is utterly fantastic. So I just want to give you a major shout-up for already killing the game there. I like that. So your producer was so on it because I typically don't wear this outfit in interviews. I'm typically a little bit more dressed up, but nice, nice pull out there.

I'm never going to dress down again. Fantastic stuff. Loved far and wide. Reggie, thank you so much for all of your time. And thank you for everything that you've done for the video game industry. You are obviously an icon, and we can't wait to see what you continue to do. Again, everyone, please go check out the book. But Reggie, do you have any final words for everyone?

No, thank you for having me. Thanks for having the opportunity for the conversation and do, you know, go pick up the book and I really believe, you know, whether you're, whether you're a Nintendo fan or not, whether you're a video game player or not, there's something in there for you. Thank you so much. Until next time, I love you all. Goodbye. See him.