Switch reveal video caused “a lot of drama” and “headbutting” at Nintendo of America

According to comments from former Nintendo of America employees, there was  “a lot of drama” and “headbutting” surrounding the Switch reveal video, including from people high up at the company.

The video we’re referring to is the one that came out eight years ago, giving everyone a first glimpse at the system. It showed various scenarios and ways in which Switch can be played. The video brought us the well-known “Karen” rooftop meme, showed a glimpse of Super Mario Odyssey for the first time, and more.

The drama seemed to stem from how different the reveal was compared to past platform announcements from Nintendo. There wasn’t any sort of explanation or talking – the focus was very much about just playing Switch rather than sharing specific details about the hardware like specs.

Kit and Krysta shared the following:

Krysta: Not everybody felt that way. It’s very jarring if you’ve been at Nintendo for like twenty years, and you’ve revealed many, many pieces of hardware throughout the years.

Kit: People need to know how many buttons there are.

Krysta: People want to know specs… and there are lots of people at the company that still had the mentality of like, ‘we need to play in the same playground as Xbox and PlayStation, and we need to talk about our specs.’ It’s like, you never win on that playground. You would get your butt kicked on that playground.

… There was a lot of drama though. There was a lot of like headbutting. I was in a few meetings like where they were doing storyboards and things like that… and people were not on board.

Kit: … We were not a part of them, but we heard there was some back and forths, like “are we certain that this is the right direction?”

Krysta: Definitely there were like some very high up people too on the NOA side that were not really on board, but in the end, it was sort of like “too bad, we heard your opinion.”

Kit: This isn’t really up for discussion.

Krysta: That’s exactly what it was. The door had completely closed. We are doing it this way, get on board.

Something that Kit and Krysta also revealed is that they had actually filmed a Switch video with former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime, but it never released to the public. The idea here was to get ahead of any potential confused or mixed reaction. According to Kit, the point of the video was “just kind of talking about some of the details that were int he reveal, focusing on some of those anticipated points where people may not totally get it and just have this conversation where you can lay it out but be very clear.” But after analyzing the results and feedback, Nintendo was satisfied with how things played out and decided against releasing the video with Reggie.

If you want to watch the Switch reveal trailer, you can’t actually do so on the official Nintendo channel. It seems that the video was pulled due to expiring rights. Other channels have archived it though, including on here.