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In an interview with Fanbyte, former Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aimé talked about diversity in the team, gave some tips on starting out in the industry, discussed Microsoft and Sony acquisitions, and described what a successor of Switch would be like.
Fils-Aimé recalled that when he was still learning the gaming industry from his mentors, he "really pushed the agenda of diversity in its broadest sense."
"I wanted my leadership team to be as broad and diverse as it could be. I pushed the company to have a mentality of embracing diversity and not just based on the color of your skin or whether you’re male or female or however you self-identify."
He knew he was making progress as his leadership team became more and more diverse. Fils-Aimé said he didn’t make it about himself, he made it about others. "It wasn’t about wanting to represent all Black and Brown people," it was about how to show that diversity has value.
He then proceeded to give some advice for people starting out in the industry, saying they first need to build and leverage their network: they need to find coaches, mentors, and sponsors. Finally, if they want to succeed, they have to work hard, "harder than anybody else."
The former Nintendo President then moves to talk about recent Microsoft and Sony acquisitions. He thinks "they needed to buttress their first-party development. Much more so Microsoft than Sony." Microsoft didn’t have a lot of first-party titles, so they needed to buttress their first-party development studios.
Interestingly, he believes that some senior accomplished developers are going to leave the corporations in several years to do something new, something innovative, which you don't usually see in big companies.
"They’ve got a game idea in the back of their head that they want to bring to fruition and the fact of the matter is in the big mega studios, they’re working on the next sequel. They’re working on the next Halo, they’re working on the next fill-in-the-blank that was a part of that prior studio. You’re typically not seeing a lot of innovation coming from those mega development combinations."
Fils-Aimé also remembered the Wii U era, saying it was all about the gamepad, the connected screen that Nintendo believed could bring new forms of innovation to games. The company thought the ability to play games on a big screen and then on the smaller screen, the gamepad, "was really interesting and really provocative." However, Wii U did not perform in the marketplace.
What does still work is Switch, and Fils-Aimé shared his thoughts about what its successor could look like. He said Nintendo is a company that believes in innovation, so the successor is going to be something completely different. He would like to see a cloud-based gaming experience and says we need "better routers in our home."
"So no platform in the home – everything is done through the cloud. This way, it truly becomes an experience where you’ve got new content, [and] you’ve got the best of all of the old content that’s made available through some sort of subscription service."
However, he doesn't think the router improvement is going to happen for another three to four years.
If you'd like to read more about Fils-Aimé thoughts on the industry, check out this interview. Also, don't forget to join our Reddit page and our Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram and Twitter, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.