You’ll see a lot of news about Reggie Fils-Aime lately. The man has a book, telling stories about the notoriously secretive video game industry, so that’s to be expected. Much of it is detailed information, some emotionalsome even a bit confusing. However, a part is simply having me sad.
It was a short passage, shared earlier today by VGCincluding the release of the Game Boy Micro, a tiny console that has a very special place in my heart, but Reggie is clearly not a fan of:
In my opinion, the concept of the Game Boy Micro is an unwise one. The hardware is exceptionally small, not only are the controls difficult to manipulate for any reasonably sized adult, but the screen is also tiny. This goes against the trend of larger screens in today’s consumer electronics.
But the development of this hardware continues, and now we are forced to launch the system. I said to Don James and Mike Fukuda: “We should have talked about this a long time ago. ‘We should all have agreed that this product would have been a distraction for us in our market and might not have introduced it here or have ended it as a global project. By working together, we can have a different outcome’.
My point is not to blame them – at the time we were colleagues. It was determined that we were operating in the vaults and this made us inefficient in managing the projects coming from NCL.
My man, allow me to counter with: no. The Game Boy Micro is a bit weird. Exactly “going against current consumer electronics trends”, and any concerns about the tiny screen and its fiddly controls are more so than the fact that a Game Boy Advance that functions as big as a business card.
We’ve talked about our love for this little machine before. How its battery last for 1000 years. How it has some of the best limited edition releases of all time. It really is a technical improvement on how GBA is, as it has an adjustable backlight. Game Boy Micro rule.
Is it a distraction to some element of the company’s bottom line and a “unclever” (at least in business/sales terms) as Reggie puts it? Sure, it’s possible. But here’s the problem with Nintendo: it doesn’t always matter. Firstly, GBA has sold about a billion units as this appears, the company’s handset profits are not entirely affected by this fun little experiment.
Second, this is a company that, for all the criticisms of its conservative nature and ruthless sales tactics, has also consistently managed to roll out some really weird and wonderful stuff. great. It’s certainly possible that some of it never sold, but it all contributed to Nintendo’s reputation as a company willing to think and act outside the box. That is the essence of their success.
There is no Wii without an E-Reader. No DS without Virtual Boy. There’s no Switch without the Micro Game Boy. All are one and the same, spaghetti is thrown against the wall to see what sticks, and it sucks to see a person who has worked hard there for so long not appreciate his work. chef!
