Nintendo of America’s Reggie Fils-Aime has openly discussed the publishers attitude towards fan petitions and campaigning in an interview with Silicon Era. During the interview Fils-Aime was asked about Operation Moonfall and Rainfall: two fan-run campaigns which are looking for a re-release of Zeldas Majoras Mask for 3DS and Xenoblade Chronicles, The Last Story and Pandora’s Tower for the Wii. Reggie simply commented that although the company does know of these campaigns and their support, they hold minimal effect on decision making at Nintendo. 

“I have to tell you-it doesn’t affect what we do,” Reggie began, “We certainly look at it, and we’re certainly aware of it, but it doesn’t necessarily affect what we do. I’ll give you an example. I mentioned earlier that our head of product development had a bet on X versus Y-we also had a bet around localizing Xenoblade.”

He continues, 

“I wanted to bring Xenoblade here. The deal was, how much of a localization effort is it? How many units are we going to sell, are we going to make money? We were literally having this debate while Operation Rainfall was happening, and we were aware that there was interest for the game, but we had to make sure that it was a strong financial proposition.”

“I’m paid to make sure that we’re driving the business forward-so we’re aware of what’s happening, but in the end we’ve got to do what’s best for the company. The thing we know [about petitions] is that 100,000 signatures doesn’t mean 100,000 sales.”

This is a painful reality for online campaigning in recent years. Due its now regular and frequent popularity through social media many companies are now having to alter their attitudes towards the constant influence of demands from the fans. However, in this instance a response post on Operation Moonfall’s Facebook page suggests that the campaigner’s will not be deterred by Reggie’s comments. Do you think that campaign petitions still have a place in the community? Let us know what you think in the comments below.