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Did you know Iwata is the man?
At least, according to Next-Gen, he is. And who could blame them for placing Nintendo's main man at the top of their list of (industry) people of the year. These are the twenty-five individuals the folks at Next-Gen felt made the greatest contributions to the gaming industry this year ... and Iwata wasn't the only one from Nintendo to be recognized. Outgoing VP George Harrison ranked in at 18th, and Yoshiaki Koizumi, director of Super Mario Galaxy, turned up in the 6th position. But the chief of chiefs reigned supreme, and is it any surprise? Satoru Iwata had led Nintendo in this banner year, and as dedicated fans, we salute him. We're just glad that Next-Gen does, as well.
Iwata is named Person of the Year
Who doesn't love the great Satoru Iwata. He's a very kind man and a pleasure to be around (this blogger knows, he met him a couple years ago). Not only that, but he has a good mind for business, as he's managed to turn Nintendo into a crazy-rich company with the hottest console and handheld on the market. Certainly, he deserves this honor.He isn't the only person from Nintendo to be recognized, however. Next-Gen's list encompasses 25 people from the industry, and other notable Nintendo folk include George Harrison and Yoshiaki Koizumi (the director behind Super Mario Galaxy).
George Harrison solo works now on iTunes
The Beatles are now on iTunes-- kind of. George Harrison has become the last solo Beatle to be added to the iTMS, as iTunes now carries all of his solo work (including "Got My Mind Set on You"-- enjoy having that in your head for the rest of the day). That means that all the Beatles have now had their solo work added to the online store. There's John, Paul, now George, and that other guy. If you want them all, it's gonna take money, a whole lot of precious money. It's gonna take plenty of money, to do it right child. Stuck in your head yet?And yet we still wait (well, most of us do) for the Beatles as a whole to appear on iTunes for purchase. It's become a kind of mythical event, hasn't it? Someday, the heavens will break open, earthquakes will rend the ground under our feet, and the world will end around us, but hopefully not before we can buy the White Album at the ITunes store.Thanks, Eric!
Harrison on the way out, taking Beatles jokes with him
Nintendo's senior vice president of marketing, George Harrison, is leaving Nintendo by the end of the year. While he didn't state a specific reason, it's likely that Harrison didn't want to move to Redwood City with Nintendo's marketing division.No longer will we have the option of resorting to a Beatles reference to cover for our lack of business understanding. We totally never did that, because we all have business degrees, but it's always a good idea to have a backup. You say goodbye, and I say hello goodbye as well.
George Harrison confirms his Nintendo retirement
It wasn't like we didn't see this one coming, but George Harrison has finally made his retirement from Nintendo official: He'll be leaving his post as Senior VP of Marketing in December, instead of making the move to San Francisco or New York with the rest of the marketing team that's getting kicked out of Redmond. Our guess is he just couldn't stand idly by while Nintendo snuck a fitness regimen into the unsuspecting homes of US citizens. Stand strong, George.[Via Joystiq]
Nintendo of America's George Harrison to retire
Though nothing's quite official yet, it looks like Nintendo of America's George Harrison is about to step down from his position as Senior Vice President of Marketing and Corporate Communications, according to an industry source, and as rumored last month. This could have something to do with NoA's move to Redwood City and New York, or just be coincidence, but either way it sounds like George is sticking around to help with the sales and marketing transition, and then bidding the big N adieu. The guy has been around since 1992, right after the launch of the SNES, and while he's never carried the kind of profile as the Regginator of late, it's hard not to notice the guy, walking around with a name like that. In related news, apparently Nintendo is advertising for job openings that sound eerily similar to Perrin Kaplan and Beth Llewelyn's, who had also been rumored to leave during the HQ shuffle.
Game Boy name may be over and possible WiiWare in 2007
Nintendo marketing exec. George Harrison says the Game Boy name may be put to rest. The DS has been been successful enough that the company no longer needs to depend on the Game Boy brand name for future products. We always did wonder what happened to the next Game Boy.Harrison tells GameDaily.biz, "It's hard to say in the future if we will ever bring back the Game Boy trademark." And so a name synonymous with many gamer's childhoods is buried. Oh well, it's not like the DS name has hurt Nintendo's bottom line.Curiously, Harrison also said Nintendo's WiiWare could be out in 2007. Actually the quote is kinda in reverse order. Harrison says, "It may not take until 2008. I've seen a couple of ideas that have already been generated even before we went public [with WiiWare]. Whether those are going to be ready or not, I don't really know." So, it pretty much hinges if the developers get their stuff in order. Only the next six months will tell who gets their WiiWare out first -- the quality of those games is a whole other issue.
Has Sony failed to understand the casual gamer?
In a recent interview with GI.biz, Nintendo VP of marketing, George Harrison, said that Sony and Microsoft have both attempted to woo the casual gamer but both failed due to a lack of understanding of the casual gamer. Specifically, Harrison mentioned the Sixaxis as Sony's failure:"We can already see some of the things they've tried. For last year's E3, at the last minute, Sony rushed out their Sixaxis controller as an effort to respond to the Wii remote. We saw Microsoft roll out Viva Piñata as their killer app for the Pokemon set. And neither of those worked really well.It's true that Nintendo knows how to dominate a certain kind of casual gamer market, but it seems a bit disingenuous to be writing off the Sixaxis as a failed attempt to capture Nintendo's market share. Sony has never particularly positioned that motion-sensitivity of the Sixaxis as a lure to the casual gamer. They've marketed it as a feature that adds to existing games and allows you to do things you've never done before (see LAIR and Warhawk). It's true that they have utilized the motion sensitivity aspect of the controller to create more easily accessible games like Blast Factor, flOw and Super Rub-a-Dub, but unlike Nintendo, thats that's clearly not their whole focus.
Nintendo refutes Gamestop, states Wii shortages are unintentional
Well, obviously. George Harrison, Nintendo's senior VP of marketing and corporate communications, has rubbished a claim that Nintendo is intentionally constricting Wii supplies in order to bolster their next fiscal year, beginning April 1. This comes in response to Gamestop's chief operating officer, Dan DeMatteo, who opined yesterday that Nintendo had "intentionally dried up supply because they made their numbers for the year." "No, that's not at all the case," says Harrison in a phone call to Next Generation. The Nintendo executive goes on to explain that it's simply a matter of competition amongst Wii territories, with Japan and Europe being just as desperate for stock. "People in Japan at NCL [Nintendo Co. Ltd.] are making the best decisions that they can about which products get shipped to which market and when." Of course, whether or not said decisions are "best" for consumers or for Nintendo's financial records is up for debate. The argument against managed scarcity has always been that making more consoles means making more money (duh!), though this critically underestimates the value of "buzz" and the strange culture that has formed around supposedly scarce items. Already, there's an impression among many that the European PS3 launch was a "failure", simply because the system failed to sell out and attain a level of unattainability. Increasing supply may net Nintendo more profits in the short run, but what sort of gain can you associate with being in the headlines? The Wii has already snagged two headlines in the last two days because it's notably in short supply, not because it's readily available and doing well.Managed scarcity does also not mean drying up the supply completely. Nintendo can sell a boatload of Wii's while still stopping short of satisfying demand and losing that hard-to-find status. If the company does decide to open the floodgates next month, they'll have lost nothing -- and the NPD sales results will show as much. Until then, just keep on asking for that Wii, implies Harrison. "Every retailer would want to have more [Wiis]. I think [DeMatteo's comments] may have been GameStop's way of trying to request more."
Nintendo's Harrison denies Wii hoarding accusation
George Harrison, Nintendo's senior vice president of marketing, apparently didn't appreciate the accusation from Gamestop COO Dan DeMatteo that Nintendo was strategically waiting until the start of the new fiscal year to ship out more Wiis. He countered with something that seems a lot less corporate cloak-and-dagger, and a lot more common sense: Nintendo is, in fact, selling a whole lot of Wiis in three regions, and that is why there's a perceived shortage.Harrison went on to speculate that DeMatteo's comments were an attempt to get some of the Wii supply diverted to Gamestop. You'd think he would have learned a lesson about such speculating from the very thing he's responding to, but perhaps we're expecting too much.[Via Game|Life]
Wii version of Twilight Princess will not support Gamecube controller
The annually-run Camp Hyrule (an online "camp" run by Nintendo, where cabins compete against each other in various mini-games and trivia) recently featured some Q&A sessions with Nintendo officials, most notably George Harrison (NoA Vice-President of Marketing). Though the sessions are generally uninformative, a fan threw out the question to which we really wanted a positive response: Will the Wii version of Twilight Princess allow players to use the standard Gamecube controls as well? The answer: a resounding no. "The GCN controller will be able to play the GCN version on the Wii console, but will not be able to play the Wii version," said Harrison. This is saddening news for me people who would like to experience both control schemes without having to buy the game twice. Which will you choose, o' faithful reader?
Nintendo plays numbers game, wins!
Nintendo certainly struck the jackpot with their little dual-screened device, didn't they? With 21 million DS units having been sold worldwide, you can bet that the Japanese giant is enjoying every last penny spilling forth from the one-armed consumer. In the celebratory press release, Nintendo points out that what they've accomplished in under two years easily trumps the 1 million iPods Apple shifted in 19 months. Apparently, that equates to 23 DS systems sold per minute ever since the November 2004 launch.As you may vengefully recall, we accused Nintendo of having suspiciously puffy sleeves in our last game of marketing poker. You'll be happy to learn then that there are no such shenanigans here and that the numbers check out based on a 24-hour business day. We suspect that if the day were any longer, Nintendo would make such a huge amount of money that they'd be taken into a back room, sternly questioned by Joe Pesci and ... this casino allegory is going nowhere.
Apple Computer prevails over Beatles' Apple Corps
The long and winding road of the Apple v. Apple battle appears to have finally come to an end, as a British judge has decided the case in favor of the American computer company. In the most recent episode, Apple Corps, the record label owned by Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono and the estate of George Harrison, had sued Apple Computer, saying that the iTunes Music Store violated an earlier settlement in which Apple Computer had agreed not to sell music. However, Apple Computer argued that the iTunes service only sold data, and the judge agreed, and told them so. "I find no breach of the trademark agreement has been demonstrated," he said. "The action therefore fails." Steve Jobs commented that he was glad that the battle was over, and added, "we have always loved the Beatles, and hopefully we can now work together to get them on the iTunes Music Store." You mean, you'll be selling Beatles data, right Steve?Update: If you'd like to pore over it, the full legal decision has been posted by The Times. In the decision, the Judge says a key factor in ruling for Apple Computer was the fact that "for Computer to cross into Corps' territory with its mark it would have to have indicated, by its use of the mark, that Computer was the source or origin of the music. ... The ownership of the rights is always attributed to the correct person within the ITMS and in the track information on any downloaded track."[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]
