I at first misread the title as "Nintendo Hires New Online Chef"

Glad to see that Nintendo seems to be taking their online presence a bit more seriously.

Nintendo is wise and having someone looking after this right from the get go, as opposed to a certain other company who didn't give a **** about consumer security and did nothing until hackers made off with millions of credit card numbers a year ago.

So does this mean we will finally have a coherent set of online technologies that developers can use and gamers can enjoy without conditions? The guy better have some balls too, last thing we want is some idiot too busy covering his own ass to do anything worthwhile, like online play and messaging.

Personally think this is 2 years to late.  They should have had this type of position when the WiiU was still very formative and its companion handheld the 3DS.

Better late than never then I guess... I'm crossing my fingers. 
I also read it as chef.  :)

I read it as Chef to initially.  That is sort of ironic.  Why would we association Chef being after the word Online?

But is he a Master Chief?

I agree with Ceric. I read this as Nintendo having not actually solidified their online strategy for Wii U yet. Or if they have, it was done from a purely Japan-centric perspective over at NCL. Either way, that means there will be some serious problems.

Hiring of this guy at this late stage + No online multiplayer for Pikmin 3 + No mention of Wii U online at all at E3 = Same old wonkified Nintendo online shenanigans for Wii U.

Hey, at least the 3DS allows you to save your credit card information.

Perhaps this is way to pessimistic but I would not be surprised at all if the Wii U launches without it's eShop no matter what Nintendo is says. That they are hiring someone for a position like this now is worrisome. It's also really annoying because it's at the point where I'm just waiting for Nintendo to drop the ball. Not to see if they do but when they do. I'll be happy if I'm wrong but I'm prepared for and expect the worse to happen.

Maybe they should have hired on an online chef afterall.


At least then Nintendo would be able to make a bloody risoto. 

Fixed.

Have they hired any more network engineers and programmers? If they have, that's when the real change would be coming, not this dude.

An Online Chef would be a great feature to include on the Wii U.

http://www.amazon.com/Personal-Trainer-Cooking-Nintendo-DS/dp/B001F62U4M/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1340990547&sr=8-11&keywords=ds+cooking

It could be kinda like this, except an online version and you could take your Wii U tablet into the kitchen and it would help you every step of the way.

You know there Current online is awfully raw.

Doesn't surprise me. They need to focus on their new Nintendo Network in order to compete better with Microsoft and Sony. Only problem is for the Nintendo Network, there are things about it that errrkkss me. Makes me unexcited and complain. Hopefully this guy can attempt to enlighten Nintendo on what's wrong.

They should have made Reggie the Online Chef. That way he would still be employed by Nintendo, but at the same time he would be in a position where he couldn't fudge things up too badly.

http://i41.tinypic.com/1zyxbtv.jpg

I find it silly when people act like Reggie is doing a bad job. They cite some of things he has supposedly done wrong while ignoring all the of the things he's done right in nearly 10 years. Be careful what you wish for. One day Reggie won't be at Nintendo of America and maybe his successor will be better, maybe he/she will be worse. As it stands, Reggie is the best person to ever hold the positions of President and COO of Nintendo of America. The odds are stacked against the next person in line.

It reminds me of people who think they can run a professional sports team from their couches better than the actual people running those teams. I'm confident that those people yelling at their televisions/computer screens would do a significantly worse job, mostly because they have no idea what their talking about. For example, there are way too many people saying, "Trade Kobe Bryant" despite Bryant being a top 5 talent in the NBA that people buy tickets to see and more importantly, the fact that he has a no trade clause in his contract. Reggie has an extremely tough job. He's not just fucking with Nintendo's very passionate fanbase. He weighs his options and picks the soundest one. It's not easy to find someone who has done as good a job as Reggie has in the last 9 years. Not everyone is or can be Steve Jobs or Larry Ellison.

EDIT: Dammit, I should have just posted a hilarious gif.

Who's Larry Ellison?

Larry Ellison

So you've never heard of Howard Lincoln?

(insert tag quote here)

That was more of why would most people know that name sort of question.

He was the Chairman of Nintendo of America. I'm not really sure if Lincoln and Fils-Aime held similar positions, chairman vs. COO. Reggie specifically succeeded Tatsumi Kimishima as president on NOA (succeeding Minoru Arakawa who held that position for nearly 400 years). In any case, people give Reggie shit for not bringing the Operation Rainfall titles over. How many titles did Nintendo of America not bring over back in the 80s and 90s? The ENTIRE Fire Emblem series is a start...

He's CEO and co-founder of Oracle, one of the largest and most powerful tech companies in the world. I'm sure many people know who he is even if you don't. Furthermore, I don't see why knowing who Larry Ellison is is any different than knowing who Satoru Iwata or Reggie Fils-Aime is.

my only complaint is it seems Reggie is nothing more than a figure head for Nintendo, sure he's a marketing expert, and thats what he does best, but he doesn't know what the good games are. The group of Peter Main, Howard Lincoln, and Arakawa made sure western 3rd parties came to Nintendo for the most part and fostewred some 2nd parties before the left.

Fire or demote Reggie, whichever works to remove him from the presidency. NOA under his tenure has been nothing but a glorified marketing department and it failed to do even that job properly with the poor E3 showing. His recent comments regarding how "Insatiable" gamers are is completely out of line and out of touch.

The Rainfall games are a very different beast to the Fire Emblem games. For one, none of them had been translated into english, Queens or otherwise. NOE at the time didn't really exist. NOAU was an incompetent company called Monaco. Back then budgets were tighter so if NOA didn't do it, they probably couldn't. These days they have effectively unlimited resources for their given task. Now, if Nintendo makes a game, it goes global.

With the Rainfall games, NOE had shown up NOA. NOA response was incompetent flailing. As far as I can tell, Reggie's job is easy as hell. The distribution channels are already there. There is a whole marketing machine ready to go. The office was waiting for him. It wasn't like he had to build an entire network out of warehouse in New York. He doesn't have to recover a market after the crash. All he needed to do was to maintain the status quo and he can't do even that. This is why he needs to go.

I like this statement. It sums it up nicely.

One thing I learned about Reggie from reading his page on Wikipedia is that he seems to go along with whatever fad is trendy at that moment. He's doing that right now with Nintendo, but he's done it in the past at his previous jobs at VH1 and elsewhere. As far as making money for investors goes, I guess he's doing a fine job, but at what cost? Long time fans are being alienated. Long time fans don't care about what's trendy or fashionable at that particularly moment, but this is the only thing Reggie cares about. "Niche" games like Xenoblade aren't on his radar at all. I seriously doubt Reggie is even a gamer in real life. "His body may be ready" to show off the latest gimmick, but he shows no passion or enthusiasm for it.

I wish I could +1 this post. Well said, my friend. I miss the old days ('89 through '98 era - pre Kimishima). It was an awesome time to be a Nintendo fan and gamer.