Image: Nintendo Life
This week you will see a lot of Reggie Phils-Emme on the Internet after the release of his book Disrupting the Game, From the Bronx to the Top of Nintendo. Although mostly a book on business leadership, he has interesting insights into his life, career and years with Nintendo.
Another angle, this time from VGC, is related to the launch of the Game Boy Micro. This happened relatively early during Fils-Aimé’s time at the company, when he was executive vice president of sales and marketing. As a device, it was desired by enthusiast fans because of its appearance, but the market reality was that its small size did not make it a practical way to play games comfortably, and Game Boy Advance has already been replaced by DS.
As a market-led CEO looking for the most successful products, Fils-Aimé was not impressed. In the book, he explains that it was launched in North America by a decision taken by NCL (Kyoto headquarters) and known only to specific departments in Nintendo of America, with leaders like him having little or no input or warning. It is a lesson from the times, as it has shown that the “isolated” of NoA and NCL have contributed to disappointing projects and results.
From my point of view, the concept of the Game Boy Micro was non-starter. The hardware was extremely small, not only were the control buttons difficult for any adult of reasonable size to manipulate, but the screen was small. This contradicts current trends in consumer electronics to enlarge screens.
But the development of this hardware continued and now we were forced to start the system. “We should have talked about it a long time ago,” I said [fellow NOA executives] Don James and Mike Fukuda. “We all had to agree that this product would distract us from our market and either not present it here or end it as a global project. By working together, we could have achieved a different result. “
My goal was not to rebuke them – we were peers then. We had to identify that we work in silos and this made us ineffective in managing projects coming from NCL [Japan].
The book gradually paints a picture of this shift in attitudes as he became president and chief operating officer, with greater collaboration and communication between NCL and its North American subsidiary.
Although the Game Boy Micro was cool, there is no doubt that this is a defective product that probably arrived at the wrong time.
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