Fake it till you make it. It’s a tried and true method, and one that Nintendo’s Reggie Fils-Aime seems to be enthusiastically embracing lately. As a follow-up to yesterday’s news about both the new 2DS handheld and a price drop for Wii U, Fils-Aime channeled all of his ass-kicking and name-taking abilities into one single word: “Meh.”
I’m not sure if Reggie just wants to stir the pot, is feeling feisty and hankering for trash talk, or if he’s still high off the fumes that led to the 2DS’s creation, but he had the following to say of the competition in a recent interview with IGN.
It’s all about the games. The competitive systems have announced their launch lineups. I’m allowed to say ‘Meh.’ I look at our lineup of titles and I feel good about our lineup. We’ve got Zelda. We’ve got Mario. We’ve got Donkey Kong. In addition to great titles like Pikmin 3 and Wonderful 101, I feel very good about our lineup, and I feel very good about the value proposition we’re putting out there for the consumer.
If you say anything with conviction you’re bound to be taken seriously by somebody, but in this case maybe Reggie doesn’t have to. It actually is a good lineup! Still, a little extra fire can’t hurt given the Wii U’s precarious circumstance.
When asked about cloud gaming, cross-platform play, and even leaps in graphics performance in general, Fils-Aime remained equally as confident.
We’ve got cloud technology that we’re delivering with Wii U. Nintendo TVii is all cloud-based technology. But the difference is, we don’t talk about the tech. We talk about the experience. We make sure that the consumer has fun with the game experiences that we provide. And so I think as you compare and contrast Nintendo with other players in the space, for us it’s about games, about the fun, about the entertainment value, and not about the tech.
I couldn’t agree more. But is it enough this time? Well, maybe that’s why the 2DS is around. Pokémon and 3DS would have sold like hotcakes come holiday as it is, and the introduction of the crazy-cheap 2DS should provide a financial safety net in the event that the Wii U does indeed continue to flop over the next few months. And if it doesn’t flop? Well, in that case I’m sure we’ll be hearing many-a-more resounding “Mehs” from Mr. Fils-Aime in the future.
