You’ll have seen a lot of Reggie Fils-Aime news lately. The man has a book out that tells stories about the notoriously secretive video game industry, so that’s to be expected. Much of it is instructive, some of it emotionallysometimes even a little puzzling. However, one section simply has me upset.
It’s a short passage shared earlier today by VGCwhich covers the release of the Game Boy Micro, a tiny console that holds a very special place in my heart, but which Reggie was clearly not a fan of:
From my point of view, the concept of the Game Boy Micro was a failure. The hardware was exceptionally small, not only were the control buttons difficult to use for any average-sized adult, but the screen was tiny. This went against current trends in consumer electronics to make screens bigger.
But the development of this hardware continued, and now we were forced to bring the system to market. “We should have talked about this a long time ago,” I said to Don James and Mike Fukuda. “We should all have agreed that this product would be a distraction for us in our market and either not launch it here or end it as a global project. If we had worked together, we could have achieved a different result.”
It wasn’t my intention to blame them – we were peers at the time. It was realizing that we were working in silos, which made us ineffective at managing projects coming in from NCL.
My husband, allow me to counter: no. The Game Boy Micro was a little freak. Going “against current consumer electronics trends” was exactly the point, and any concerns about the tiny screen and difficult controls were more than outweighed by the fact that it was the case a functional Game Boy Advance the size of a business card.
We’ve previously spoken at length about our love for this little machine. How its batteries last 1000 years. As it has had some of the best limited edition releases of all time. As it was actually a technical improvement over the GBA since it had an adjustable backlight. The Game Boy Micro reigns.
Was it a distraction for certain profit-minded elements of the company and a “nonstarter” (at least in a business/sales sense) as Reggie puts it? Sure, maybe. But here’s the thing about Nintendo: That doesn’t always matter. First, as GBA had sold around a billion units as of this writing, the company’s handheld profits weren’t exactly jeopardized by this fun little experiment.
Second, this is a company that, despite all the criticism for its conservative nature and ruthless sales tactics, has also constantly been waving for the fences and releasing some really weird and wonderful shit. Sure, some of these might never sell, but they all add to Nintendo’s reputation for being a company willing to think and act outside the box. It’s the essence of their success.
There is no Wii without an e-reader. There is no DS without Virtual Boy. No Switch without Game Boy Micro. They’re all one and the same, strands of spaghetti are flung against the wall to see what sticks and it sucks to see someone who’s worked there so closely together for so long not appreciate the chef’s work!
