Recently, the former head of indie game development at Nintendo, Dan Adelman, had an interview where he discussed a wide range of topics, including the issue of region locking games and how Nintendo could improve indie development going forward.

He stated that he had talked to the president of Nintendo of America, Reggie Fils-Aimé, about how they could change the whole region locking practice often employed by Nintendo and also gave several insights into how the company could address the future of indie game development at Nintendo.

Adelman said that he had spoken to Reggie regarding a possible push for less or no region locking on games from Nintendo. However, Reggie is only the president of Nintendo of America, meaning that there are limits to the impact they can make in Nintendo Japan. The company there is “very open to feedback, but ultimately that’s where the final decisions get made.”

“I’ve had many meetings with Reggie about topics like this. Unfortunately, there are limits around what Nintendo of America, as a subsidiary, can impact. Reggie and others at Nintendo of America may provide a list of changes they’d like to make, but all of the actual changes would need to be made in Japan. Nintendo Japan is very open to feedback, but ultimately that’s where the final decisions get made.”

— Dan Adelman

He also discussed his time with Nintendo, speaking about how he felt that there were some

“limitations” to the indie game program and that policy decisions made by Nintendo Japan (which he could not change) meant that games needed a “minimum sales number” to get help from Nintendo. This restricted the development of indie titles, and only the launch of the 3DS and Wii U gave the signal that indie games would become a larger part of the business, attracting more potential indie developers than in recent years.

“There were some limitations, of course. I didn’t have a big budget that I could use to guarantee sales for developers who bring their games to Nintendo platforms for example. There were also worldwide policy decisions that were handed down by Japan that I couldn’t really change. As an example, in the WiiWare days, we had a policy that said that games needed to reach a minimum sales number in order to qualify for rev share. It became very apparent very early on that that was a bad idea, but ultimately it stayed. Another example is how DSiWare games had to be one of 3 prices: $2, $5, or $8+. It was built into the UI of the DSi, so there was no changing that. There are lots of other examples, but I think you get the idea. But in terms of which developers I wanted to talk to, how I wanted to talk to them, what I wanted to achieve with the digital distribution business, I had very little oversight. I basically did what I wanted, which was really great. I think a lot of people thought of digital distribution as an experiment for the future, so not many people actually paid attention to it during the WiiWare and DSiWare years. Once the 3DS and Wii U launched, it was much more apparent that this was going to be a bigger part of the overall business, so a lot more people suddenly got involved.”

— Dan Adelman

In the same interview, Adelman also said that Reggie wasn’t to blame for the Wii U’s slow sales and explained how Nintendo could improve their indie game strategy. He has also announced his next project: a 2D platformer called Chasm.

Source: NintendOn

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