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It will be impossible to draw any meaningful conclusion from the Wii U launch until the New Year, but that hasn’t stopped some quarters of the press adapting an almost instinctively negative position.
But in the face of hasty conclusions, Nintendo of America boss Reggie Fils-Aime has praised the company for its launch efforts.
"Reviews of a system or review of a game really come down to the quality and capability of the reviewer," he told Gamasutra. "There has been a range of comments and commentary.
But when I go on Miiverse and see how consumers are reacting to games like ZombiU or Call of Duty, that tells me we’re doing something very, very positive. Similarly, when I go on other consumer social networks and see other consumer reaction that is positive, I know we’ve done well.
"Every time we launch a new system, there are significant challenges," he said. "There’s everything from supply to making sure the new offering meet our expectations.
In the digital, connected services area, much of what we’re doing is groundbreaking, so we are having to learn as we go to make sure the consumer has the very best experience possible."
Reggie also addressed criticism of the sizable day-one patch that customers must download to get the machine up to full spec, as well as confirming that the patch won’t be installed in systems out of the box until around Q2 next year.
"Nintendo developers want to make sure that the very best product is available to consumers," he added. "That creates a dynamic where our developers are working on elements until the very last point possible. That’s why the system update was required on day one – and this is quite similar to what’s happened with other consumer electronic products."
