Reggie Fils-Aime 'Extremely Disappointed' in Lack of Core Wii Games from Third Parties

Stephen Totilo over at Kotaku recently spoke with Nintendo of America boss Reggie Fils-Aime about the fact that third-party publishers tend not to bring their big hardcore IP to the Wii platform. It was pointed out that Activision and Ubisoft at a recent event showed trailers for high-end games like Modern Warfare 2 and Assassin's Creed II, neither of which is coming to Wii. How does Reggie feel about this? He's obviously not happy.

"I'm extremely disappointed," he said. "I've had this conversation with every publisher who makes content that is not available on my platform. The conversation goes like this: 'We have a 22-million unit installed base. We have a very diverse audience… We have active gamers that hunger for this type of content. And why isn't it available?'"

Of course, developers like Infinity Ward have already made it clear that the Wii just isn't capable of delivering the experience they strive to create.  Fils-Aime pointed out that other core games, like Resident Evil 4 and Call of Duty World at War, each sold well over a million copies on the Wii. He also stressed that decisions on platforms are made years in advance. 

"I think for those games, typically decisions are being made two years prior," he said. "And so the decisions two years ago were that those types of games would not be effective on the platform. But we've shown that that's just not the case. High-quality, effectively marketed against our installed base will sell, period end of story."

Naturally, the conversation then turned to the constant talk about a purported Wii HD. When it was suggested that the Wii would get more core games if it had HD graphics, Reggie countered, "The fundamental issue in the logic flow is that — and this is what I'm hearing, whether it's from you or Geoff [Keighley] or Michael [Pachter] himself — is that, gosh it's such an opportunity to take HD capability and link it with the Wii. And what we have said, repeatedly, is that that's not the way we at Nintendo do things. The way we at Nintendo do things is, you know, when we will move to a new generation, it's because there are some fundamental things the [current] console cannot do. What that says is that simply the addition of HD capability will not be the next step for us. There will be more to it. There will be additional capability. There will be additional elements, and, given that, it is far into the future."

Interestingly, when asked point blank about a Wii HD launching next year, this time instead of simply saying "No," Reggie answered, "Not to announce with you here today."