Right from the get go, former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé addresses the elephant in the room: “I’m sure at this point you’re wondering, what is the former president and chief operating officer of Nintendo of America doing at a Microsoft Xbox event?”
“I don’t know what I’m doing here either,” Fils-Aimé quipped.
Continuing, the former Nintendo president added that he was joined by a collection of execs he calls friends and that he “competed against fiercely” as well as worked closely with to do things in the gaming industry.
Loads of Xbox luminaries were on hand: 343 Industries head Bonnie Ross, former corporate vice president of Interactive Entertainment’s Peter Moore, former vice president of Microsoft Game Studios Ed Fries, and former Chief Xbox Officer Robbie Bach took part in the round table discussion about the past, present and future of creativity and innovation.
Fils-Aimé does a good job of moderating the discussion, and the conversation is quite interesting. It goes into depth about the birth of Xbox, touching on the Sega Dreamcast and the rise of online console gaming. The whole talk is well worth a watch.
At the start of the panel, the former Nintendo exec also does a nice job of mentioning, well, Nintendo—and making a few references later in the talk.
- “And certainly, I look back with a lot of pride on of the innovation that I was part of, whether it was the Nintendo DS with two screens, touch screen, first touch screen mass market device in the consumer electronics space, the work that I did with the Wii.”
- “And I have to sneak it in. During that generation, the Wii was the top-selling console.”
- “And obviously, the work I did with the Switch…”
- When Moore talked about viewing 3D sports on “hopefully” a Microsoft Surface in the future, Fils-Aimé chimed in, “Maybe on your Nintendo 3DS.”
- When reflecting back to when the Xbox launched, Fils-Aimé, who wasn’t yet in the gaming industry, recalled, “I was that prototypical consumer that had a PS2 in my house already. I had an N64. I was thinking about a GameCube, but I actually didn’t buy a GameCube until I was already part of Nintendo.”
This might be the most times ever that Nintendo and its products have been mentioned in a Microsoft event!