In May 2004, when Nintendo of America's then-executive vice president of marketing Reginald Fils-Aime took the stage at the Los Angeles Electronic Entertainment Expo and declared "My name is Reggie. I'm about kickin' ass, I'm about takin' names, and we're about makin' games," a videogame industry star was born. And for a fanbase that had been demoralized by the company's loss of market share and cool factor to not only Sony but also Microsoft, Fils-Aime's brash, unapologetic confidence in the Nintendo's heritage and prospects was the shot in the arm Nintendo console fanboys needed.

Since his arrival at Nintendo at the end of 2003, we've had the good fortune of being able to chat with Fils-Aime, or Reggie as he's more commonly known, on a fairly regular basis, both formally and informally. We sat down with him again at last month's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, just after our chat with Nintendo general manager and chief design guru Shigeru Miyamoto (click here for that interview.) Here in Part I, we discuss how the Wii won back the support of developers and publishers that had abandoned the Gamecube, whether Fils-Aime should have engaged us in a James "J" Allard-style wager over the relative success of DS and PSP, and what, if anything, he and his company must do to make their platforms more viable for third party publishers.

Since you've been at Nintendo and been doing these interviews with me, you've undergone quite graciously and with good humor some tough grilling and tough questions. So I think it's only fair that I give you the opportunity to do a little victory lap. So I'll pose a question to kick it off. When you took the job with Nintendo, looking at where you're at right now, how much of that success did you know was going to happen, and how much of it was faith?

You know, I would say a large part of where we are today, I anticipated with hard work, with great products, based on a very early conversation that I had had with Mr. Iwata before I had even come on board. So much of this is planned. Now it always helps with some level of serendipity, some things that you can never quite anticipate, and we've had some of that both in our success with DS and the Wii. But make no mistake, our success has been thought through, planned, and we've been fortunate in being able to execute as well as we have.

So there were no moments of crisis, no moments of "O Gods of the Console, why hast thou forsaken me?" When you were going out to meet with developers, meet publishers, and based on Nintendo's recent history, you were seeing a certain amount of skepticism, a certain amount of blank faces, a certain amount of polite "Yeah, we'll get back to you," but not necessarily seeing the conversion, the belief, the come to Jesus moment among them. What was it like when you would go out and have that kind of response?

You know, it was certainly a lot of hard work involved. I'll tell a story. Early in my tenure, I went to an event sponsored by Ziff-Davis and had the opportunity to spend time with a number of different publishers. And in the three days of that conference, I spent quite a bit of time with one particular publisher, partly for me to learn the business, but also partly to see how they saw Nintendo and to talk about business opportunity. That publisher was Ubisoft, that executive was Laurent Detoc, and I do believe that that conversation helped sow the seeds for a much better relationship that we have not only with Ubisoft, but with many, many publishers.

It was based on a clarity of Nintendo's own vision for where we wanted to go, the clarity of a business case that made sense for publishers, and on the part of certain executives, a betting that we would actually deliver the way that we have. So make no mistake N'Gai, it's been hard work, there have been tough conversations and it's not always been a bed of roses, so to speak. But we have worked very hard to get to where we are, and frankly, given some of the challenges we've had in our history, I think it makes us very humble, and it makes us acknowledge that we have to work even harder in the future to maintain the momentum.

Well, I've spoken with Laurent, and from his perspective, he says that that he'd been actively pursuing. He'd long been a fan of Nintendo products, long been a fan of Mr. Miyamoto's work and really wanted to be involved with your company. He was a big fan of Juana Tingdale's, and they'd had a business relationship that went way back. That's good. But I'm thinking more of developers and publishers where it may have been a little more adversarial.

There was a period before your arrival, where George Harrison, if I'm not remembering it wrong, said on stage "Mario will never kill hookers," or something like that. It was a shot at the very capable, talented and successful gentlemen at Rockstar. Now since then, following your arrival, not much activity from Rockstar on Gamecube. But now, we see Manhunt 2 coming to the Wii. Can you give us a little insight into how that got repaired and sewn up to now where you're getting a game that really doesn't seem very Nintendo?

You know, I think all of the publishers from EA and Larry Probst and the meetings that I've with him to Take-Two and the conversations with Paul Eibeler, I think what they all respect is my candid approach to talk the realities of the business, the realities of where Nintendo wants to go, and the fact that as publishers, they represent critical opportunities to us that frankly Nintendo by itself cannot take advantage of. We need EA, Rockstar, all of the various entities, because they bring content that we just don't do. In the case of Take-Two and Rockstar, it was a series of conversations, predominantly with Paul Eibeler, around what made sense for them, what makes sense for us, and frankly, those conversations continue.

I fully expect we will see even more support out of Take-Two in total. They have fantastic capabilities in sports--sports other than the Mario genre of sports Nintendo doesn't do--so it's a match that needs to happen. I can't speak to what George may have said from the stage, what I can say is that publishers and developers respect a straightforward approach that makes sense for them and makes sense for Nintendo. And I think that's what I've been able to bring to the party and to help drive some of those relationships.

Now one of the--well, I was going to say points of contention, but let's just say things that we've discussed repeatedly in our interviews--is third party support: where is it, when is it coming, that sort of thing. You and I have been having this conversation even as it was clear that there was an uptick in the DS business: it was going to be good, then it was going to be great, it was going to outstrip Sony, which is not what I had predicted in terms of the DS vs. the PSP.

Too bad we didn't make a bet on your dreadlocks or some other item. [Laughs.]

I agree. [Laughs.] We won't name names, but at this table, at least, there are two honorable men speaking. Others are perhaps less so. Back to the DS, even as this success was taking place, I was looking at the numbers and seeing that the business opportunity for third parties on Nintendo's platforms continues to be very challenging. Now with the Wii launch, the third party support was there, we've talked about it; there is third party software that's doing well. But look at the history. The DS is a more mature platform, and still very much a challenge for third party publishers.

My question to you is, is there anything that Nintendo can, should or must do in order to help third parties in general, or certain key third party products? I don't know if it's a Miyamoto's Choice Award, or Iwata's Choice Award, or maybe Reggie's Kick Ass-Take Names Award, that can somehow convince your installed base, your active Nintendo fans, to take a closer look at good third party products that sometimes get overlooked?

You know, N'Gai, I think there's three parts to your question. First, as you look at Nintendo DS, how did third party support come on board, where does that go to? I think that with the DS, third party support that truly took advantage of the DS functionality--touch screen, two screen, wireless--was slower in coming. But as those games come on board, they're selling very, very well. Final Fantasy III on DS, it's a million unit seller in Japan; here it's at this point probably a half-million unit seller. It took a classic game, remastered it for the DS, put in place some of the good functionality, and it works. As we see more of that on the DS, we will see more and more licensee participation, and from a Nintendo perspective, we love that.

For the Wii, because of the history that we created with DS, it was certainly easier to get licensees to jump on board right at the very start. We're pleased that given the data that has been published so far from NPD that two out of every three games bought on the Wii are licensee titles, That's fantastic for us. Where that goes in the future, which is the third part of your question, we acknowledge that Nintendo needs to do a better job sharing technical expertise and sharing insight from our own creative process, especially with key publishers that are choosing to invest and partner very heavily with us. That's a commitment by Mr. Iwata, that's a commitment by Mr. Miyamoto, and the good news is that it's happening right now. It won't be some sort of award, at least not yet, but what we are doing is having our very senior developers spend time with publishers and their development arms helping them understand our platform, and hopefully leading to better games. We think that's the best way to leverage our own knowledge and expertise in a way that'll create fantastic games for the consumer to enjoy on our platforms.

Next: We challenge Fils-Aime's assertion that the difficulties third parties face on Nintendo platforms is solely an issue of product quality. He in turn challenges our depiction of his now-famed "Read my lips" pledge that the Wii would not suffer from the legendary Nintendo drought. And we challenge you to share your thoughts on these topics in our message boards.