Russian Nintendo CEO Caught Ranting On Official Live Stream As Management Breaks Down

Someone's getting fired this morning that's for sure.

Theres a Nintendo Russia? Damn that flew over my head. I knew about NOA NOJ and NOE but NOE don't make any of the choices. We just get what NOA say we can have so i was shocked to hear Russia have a division too

Forget Reggie, this is the guy I want trying to sell games to me. My body is F*^%&!#$^)^!#(^%$(#!)% Ready

Yeah, this guy needs to be fired, - his business decisions are just awful.

I live in Russia and I signed the petition. Unfortunately, Nintendo does not want to develop its business in my country

What a clown, I usually don't wish unemployment on anyone but this guy is begging for it.

Hey guys and gals, fellow Nintendo fan from Russia here, please help and sign this petition, we really need to get rid of this clown because all he does is hinder Nintendos progress in our market with his asinine decisions.
Thank You!

https://www.change.org/p/спасите-nintendo-россия-от-её-генерального-директора-save-nintendo-russia-from-it-s-general-manager?recruiter=381177856&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=share_petition

"It's admittedly a side of Nintendo we've never seen before"

You write this like Nintendo is a person, did Nintendo hurt your feelings?!

Be very surprised if he keeps his job after that. Protip - if you aren't sure whether the stream is live or not, don't go on camera ranting and raving because you might be made to look the fool.

Wow, he is that kind of boss you see in movies and games as the generic "bad guy" that you think nobody in the real world actually is like, huh?

Also it is quite the bad-guy-clischee to accidentally reveal you evilness on camera. O.o

@RupeeClock Last I checked there was an ample supply of Pokemon Lets Go Pikachus

What a rude individual. Hope he’s out of there ASAP

https://youtu.be/JVs5TDrdsj4

@Moms-Meowth there are actually many games that get to the west because of NOE, the Xenoblade series comes to mind... and the Tingle rosy rupeeland. I’m actually quite happy with NOE, they Also dont voice over directs but use subtitles

I've encountered people like that in my career , they usually get away with awful behaviour to other people for a while until the straw breaks the camel's back and then they are out of there.

So what if other people are accountable to you, it doesn't give you the right to behave like that, and you'll soon find out with the Russian equivalent of a p45 that your accountable to them too.

Nintendo is usually pretty quick about stuff like this. I am pretty sure we will get the News that this guy got fired in the next couple of days. Worst kind of Boss one can have...

From Russia with love.

@ferryb001 One of the few things we really should praise NoE for. Who the arrr me hearties would want some cringy voice over person talking to us over the Nintendo representative. Slap some subs on and we're golden.

I accidentally tuned into the American Direct once and boy it was awful.

I know I should feign surprise that even Nintendo in Russia is rife with moronic business management and decisions that defy logic, but... I'm really not. It just mirrors the rest of Russia really.

(and to the inevitable people who reply...) The country. You know. Not every single person in it.

@RupeeClock Well if he says thats the only version of the game we want to buy then who am I to argue with him.

He wears a Zelda shirt so he's a weeeener nonetheless!

@Moms-Meowth lol, there is no "NOJ". I think that you mean NCL.

He definitely needs to watch his language, particularly on a live stream(!) but we don't know what happened in the lead up to this... For him to be that angry, there surely must be some sort of back story? If he's got that riled up straight off the beat, then yea, he definitely should consider whether he's right for his position, before Nintendo decide for him.

In terms of Let's Go Pokemon stock issues. Whenever I've heard anything about the success of Pokemon GO! I never see or hear anything about the Russian market... Is it even remotely popular there? It seems to me they took the decision to base their Let's Go Pokemon unit volumes off the back of the popularity of Pokemon Go. Add to that the fact that every Pokemon Go player is a "digital consumer" and you can see how they arrived at a low physical unit build number. The game has unlimited availability on the eShop. And add to that the fact the game has 2 SKU's for which it's near impossible to predict the popularity of each. I'm pretty sure most CEO's would sign off on a more cautious number. And that's before we even consider that the number would come from their Analysis and Operations teams... the CEO doesn't pluck a number out of thin air.

nobody is asking the right questions: How did he get the job in the first place? What type of screenings did Nintendo do to hire this guy? sighs...

Another point to consider... A CEO that's so hands on that he's attending live streams doesn't sound like a CEO to me. That's what your PR Manager or Marketing Manager should be doing... at a stretch maybe a Country Manager, or a Marketing Director (if it's a particularly important event/ activation). It's certainly not a CEO's job. Sounds like he's got a very, very small team and I'd hazard a guess his background is more aligned to be a traditional CEO of a business, as opposed to this weird hybrid "doing everything" role that he has now.

Don't get me wrong, he's clearly got anger issues and should not be speaking to anyone, let alone staff the way he is... but there's clearly some underlying issues in play here too.

My fellow russians Nintendo fans have my sympathy.

Unfotunately, NCL don't care for others subsidiaries but NoA.

Fans in South America, Africa and sometimes in Europe have second class treatment by NIntendo. This is really sad, and Nintendo is the only game company that I care.

What do we actually know about the guy? That he made the weird choice with Let's Go Eevee! and this meltdown.

While clearly those are some pretty noteworthy blunders, they don't strike me as being enough to warrant him losing his job on their own. Should he be reprimanded? Absolutely! But if these are the only two things he has done that are problems like this, I'd still give him another chance.

[edit] Clearly from what people have said, there WAS a lot more to it than I realized. I didn't watch the video because I don't speak a word of Russian and figured I would have no idea what was going on.

@nocdaes Pokemon are exteremely popular in Russia, all thanks to the anime which aired here somewhere in-between 1999-2000. It was huge and everybody loved it, anyone with basic pop culture knowledge here knows Pokemon.

Russia wasnt relevant in the Pokemon Go talks because there were some issues with them trying to officially release it on the Appstore and Google Play Market because of our goverment acting like big babies, scared of the Pokemon Go boom. People still played it a ton here though, they just didn’t have an option to download it straight through the playmarket.

Pikachu might be the most recognizable Pokemon, but I feel that fact is prelevant basically everywhere, putting out shortages on Eevee version just because of that fact alone is a very simple-minded decision if you ask me, espeically since Pokemon is the most beloved and well-recognized Nintendo franchise in Russia.

@Heavyarms55
"enough to warrant him losing his job"

Just watch the video and you'll see.

Yeah, he's done. Bye bye, mister.

@Itachi2099 Well the whole Government intervention thing just sends alarm bells ringing... this Switch game has functionality that links it to a mobile game that you're saying was essentially banned? If I was the CEO of Nintendo Russia, based on that single fact alone, I'd definitely low-ball my number. I'd suggest the blame lies as much here with the Pokemon Go! publishing issue, and with Nintendo perhaps leaning too heavily on Pokemon Go in their marketing campaign...

I don't care about the "save fans from this guy" part (and this is coming from a fanship-plagued person primarily using a Russian Nintendo account), but in terms of staff interaction and behaviour the recorded situation is certainly a mess. The very least such things normally warrant is a public apology, not trying to sweep the evidence under the rug, but no cookie for guessing what people often choose here in Eastern Europe. :V And if the claims about the guy stepping on Konami's rakes towards ex-employees are true as well, this is all piling up to be something for Big N higher-ups to be made aware of and address indeed.

@vitelus He was appointed by Nintendo and brought in from overseas. So, he's not even local and can't understand the specifics of our Russian market.

I don't mind the cursing all that much, if anything Nintendo needs more cursing.
But being that much of douche while throwing a mild tempertatrum and the fact that he has little to no skill as a buisnessman make it fairly clear that he should be replaced with someone better for the job.

“Isolated incident” - ha yeah ok. Unfortunately many of us and many millions work for people exactly like this. Nintendo like any other business will have managers that think it’s ok to shout and think it gets results. It doesn’t it creates a toxic environment- unfortunately this is common place

@Heavyarms55 If Reggie walked into a Nintendo Treehouse livestream and started swearing and firing people who didn't agree with them... well, and that's on top of the backwards business decisions. Nintendo isn't very big in Russia to begin with, and you don't change that by offering less products than in other regions, no Let's Go Eevee for example, cancelling Pokemon TCG in Russia, etc.

@nocdaes gotta clarify something, Pokemon Go was getting problems to be released here at first, but long since then its up on the Appstore and Google Play. With this discovery, limiting Lets Go sales makes it even more of an asinine decision.

@Itachi2099 Ahh OK, well that does change things somewhat then... although I still question how much revenue Pokemon Go generates in the Russian market. As I said, it never appears in any stats or charts for the game... And pretty much everywhere else you can imagine does. So yea... rightly or wrongly, you can at least see some logic in their decision to play it low on a game that leans so heavily on a mobile game that has limited success there.

Nintendo should just withdraw from Russia entirely (it's rife with piracy anyway), and instead direct some resources back to Brazil and give Baltic countries, like Poland for example, more attention.

@nocdaes Pokemon Go was popular for about a month and then everyone just forgot about it. Even I was into it for about a week...

@nocdaes The fact is, no charts or stats can accurately represent Pokemon GO's popularity in Russia. There's no data on it for one simple reason: the game actually wasn't officially released here until just two months ago. So as far as most stats and charts are concerned, it wasn't there.
Yet it was. From my experience, it's been quite a hit here, it's just all this time (two years!) people have been downloading it from another regions' app stores and playing.
So if Yasha is basing his assumption on "official" data despite its irrelevance due to that fact, I'd say that's a poor forecast indeed.

@nocdaes They're only creating shortages of Eevee, not Pikachu. So I'm afraid it still makes no sense with your reasoning.

Sweet Fancy Moses that was bad.

@RainbowGazelle The Eevee shortage will be down to retail. Retail choose how much stock of a game they want to buy, and they select the ratio between SKUs. Once Nintendo have received retail orders, they then build the physical stock based on those numbers (usually with a 20% buffer). It sounds like no-one at retail knew about Eevee compared to Pikachu, so they didn't buy Eevee stock!

@Fureon I don't think it's a poor forecast as it's based on the facts that were available to them. Taking into consideration downloads from other markets would be a poor forecast... even if you could somehow extrapolate that x volume of installs from France were in fact by Russians - something I doubt is even possible to do knowing how strict Apple are with their data and all the GDPR stuff thats been introduced this year.

There's also the direct demand from their retailers (retailer wants to buy X so you build X for them, and include an associated extra buffer of Y for re-orders) that feeds into their build numbers too. Seems to me that retail didn't have a clue who Eevee was, and they went with the more familiar, and safer option, of Pikachu.

One thing that is strange, is that retail pre-orders would have shown the ratio between the two SKU's months ago. I don't know how big pre-orders are in Russia, or how many retailers support it, but in the UK at least, if you saw 60% of your pre-orders for PS4 and 40% for Xbox One, then you can be pretty confident your week 1 sales will show a very similar split to within a percentage point or two. I find it unlikely they wouldn't build more Eevee off the back of high pre0orders for the SKU, so this whole story reeks of "blown out of proportion" to me. I'd question whether it's a vocal few that can't get Eevee, versus a serious lack of supply for the demand.

Bye bye Haddad

What was the first Nintendo console officially released in Russia? I know Russians were playing the Dendy during the NES and Super NES days.

@nocdaes I can't call good a forecast that relies on factually irrelevant data (missing almost the whole lifespan of the game and not reflecting any players who already got it from a foreign app store) and ignores the facts beside it.
I wasn't suggesting using the foreign app-market install data either. There are other means to gather how popular it really is. With social media it's easier than ever since people love to post their interests and activities, and form communities to talk about games. Just the fact that we have social media communities not only for PoGo in general but even for specific cities and towns as well, shows that there is clearly interest. Yasha is supposed to acknowledge that, not ignore it.
If he wants Nintendo to prosper in this country he should stay in touch and be aware of the audience's interests and demands, not blindly assume and decide for them.
Really, social media is an extremely important evaluation tool that should not be overlooked. It's not just anecdotal evidence, you could count the numbers of members, comments, likes etc. on these communities as well. Even if it doesn't have the exact precision as the number of downloads, it's still far more relevant in this case.

I just watched the youtube video and hate to take the side of the devil... But Yasha's anger wasn't totally unfounded. That live stream was completely jacked up...

Yasha (who represents the untech savy fanbase) couldnt find the live stream on their OWN social media... it should definitely be on the front page!!

They lost connection during the final round of the tournament? oh geeze..

Of course... yelling at your people and cursing while representing a family friendly company such as Nintendo is unforgivable... but I get where hes coming from.

@NewAdvent In that case, there was more to it then I realized. Yeah, fire the jerk!

@Tiefseemiez hey not sure if you working or not, but from my experience and most of my friends, the average boss is like this.

Can we just get him fired now. Considering there might have been some kids watching the stream, this could have ended up worse then it already was.

@MysticGengar
Won’t somebody please think of the children!

Dude must wake up every day and eat a Poison Mushroom straight out of the Mario Universe.

This guy is a Richard.

@Farts_Ahoy

Perhaps if he'd have used respect and patience then things would have been worked out better for him.

"In Soviet Russia, Nintendo games beat you."

In Soviet Russia, Nintendo plays you.

In Soviet Russia, big N curses YOU!

Haha good on them for saving the feed.

@patbacknitro18 have... You been living under a rock lately? Or is this your low effort attempt at being funny?

@G_M I would have made an In Soviet Russia joke to counter your comment but thats already been taken

"and likely isolated to this particular branch." why? what a racist statement. bad supervisors are everywhere, not just in russia. this is just one case that actually got captured on camera.

When gta comes to the switch, I want the direct to be like this.

What an awful person. Come on Nintendo get someone friendly and passionate to replace him please.

I don't like this gritty Russian version of Reggie.

@Don It was the Wii. Only 100k were sold because there weren't any actual Nintendo of Russia there. But there were some ads on the federal television. It was only the 3DS when they started an actual invasion of the russian market, but strangely, the only ads I remember being shown on major TV channels in 2011 were Zelda OoT 3D featuring Robbie and Zelda Williams. Almost no big games stores were selling 3DS games that were released from 2013 through 2016.

The second wave of marketing started when the Switch came around and we could see actual advertising almost everywhere besides TV (with 2x2 channel being an exception as always, that was and still is the only place where they showed 3DS, Wii U and Switch ads). Obviously the sales are far, far better than they used to be during the era of Wiis.

And it seems that he might not actually be fired because he had a lot of really good policies as well that helped Nintendo in the long run. I want to believe that that video and all the rumours from anonymous NRU employees about this kind of behaviour being an ordinary thing for NRU staff were all fake, I really do.

Hmm... I don’t understand the outrage. How would you react if you were surrounded by morons?

Only one thing left for Nintendo to do is fire his a**. They don't need that liability on their hands.

@theberrage I wouldn't scream and call them names on a stream that a ton of people are watching, that's for sure. Even if it might not work because of technical difficulties or someone else's stupidity.

@speedball Maybe it's just him. If he's fired, maybe Nintendo's presence in Russia will increase.

For those interested, here's footage of the breakdown.

In other news: I'm getting a japanese new 3ds to play digimon redigitize decode digimon universe appli monsters and buddyfight. also super dragon ball heroes world mission has been listed in austrailia board!

There...there... is a Nintendo of Russia???

Guess you learn something new everyday.

In soviet Russia, Nintendo plays you!

In Russia, the people fire you!

Executives are almost always megalomaniacal nutcases with huge egos that could eat Japan. STEVE JOBS? HELLO! He’s actually not the worst I’ve seen, but this is not a good look for a family friendly company that trades in fun and silly light hearted entertainment. You can bet HQ is revving up the company jet and it’s pointed straight at Moscow. The guy will walk away with millions of dollars in severance though.

As a Russian Nintendo gamer, I'd like to say a few words in Yasha's defense. Disclaimer: I have met him in person only once in the beginning of his career in Russia and can't say I'm a huge fan of his. My brother has worked in the Russian office of Nintendo for a few months, so I know a few things from inside as well.

First and foremost, the guy got the Nintendo business in Russia running more or less properly. The Switch and main games are easy to buy virtually in any place where video games are sold. When I wanted to buy a GC back in 2004, it was on sale in 1 (one!) place in Moscow, officially. With a whopping 5 (five!) games to chose from. The Nintendo 64? NO official sales at all as far as I know, or just nominal, impossible to come by. The GBA? Just the system, the games were all knockoffs. Like really, selling the system and not selling the games. It got marginally better with the DS and the Wii (the DS Light was even officially launched in Russia with a sort of launch event, followed by the Wii), a couple of games were localized, but the whole thing has died down pretty quickly to the GC state. With the 3DS launch under Yasha it got light years better. With the Switch, every major retailer both online and offline has a decent selection of the system variants and the games. They are actually advertised on TV and promoted in the Internet. Major titles are getting localized into Russian. The eShop and the Switch firmware are localized. Yes, it's nothing compared to Japan or to the West, but it's a mountain huge progress in less than 10 years.

Then we should understand that Nintendo is a Japanese company, run in a very Japanese style. I myself work in the Russian local entity of another Japanese company very similar in management style. Boss yelling (yep, we are talking about Japanese guys yelling at Japanese guys as well) is absolutely normal for the Asian corporate culture. 2/3 of what has been said about Yasha's management style is not about Yasha, but about how a big, conservative Japanese company is run. I can bet my money on Yasha's bosses endorsing this style of management. Mind you, there's no Nintendo of Russia, it's Nintendo of Europe's regional office. And Nintendo of Europe management is still very Japanese.

Then, let's not be whining millennials. A boss yelling at you? So what? The wages in Nintendo of Russia (let's call it that way for the sake of simplicity) are 1.5 higher compared to the market average. Japanese corporate management style is all about subordination and carrying out orders (almost literally military-style), creativity is not what is expected or endorsed. This mumbling about how younger people want to be creative and developing themselves is their problem, not their employer's. You are paid money, you do what you are told, it's that simple. When my brother worked there, employees somehow had the wrong idea that their "business improvement" ideas mattered for NoE. They did not. They were supposed to carry out their duties diligently instead of wasting time for "creative" ideas no one requested.

Finally, being an active member of Russian Nintendo community, I believe I more or less understand what it is like. Yes, these are true Nintendo enthusiasts, who went through everything to get Nintendo systems when they were not easily available and they, step by step, have created the soil for the current Nintendo development in Russia. But they are also very picky. First they ask for localizations, then they don't like them because of the Russian translation being "too creative". They don't like the "Whole game in Russian" mark on the boxes, so they import European boxes "to look good" in their collection. They say they want the eShop in Russian, with Ruble price and accepting cards issued by Russian banks, but they buy games in Turkish or Argentinian eShops, because prices there are lower (local currencies' fluctuations, I guess). So the community is very vocal and very picky. Outside of the community, "general gamers" are familiar only with most basic Nintendo mascots. Mario, Link and yes, Pikachu. Yasha is probably right - the very notion of Evee's existence is generally very weak outside of the Pokemon and Nintendo community minority.

I don't mean to say Yasha is the next Jesus and is doing everything just perfectly, he also seems a rather short-tempered and even somewhat arrogant person, but shaming him in the comments without knowing the broader picture is unfair, I believe. Given his achievements, my guess is that he is staying.

I'm not naive enough to believe that every branch of Nintendo except this specific Russian one is actually everyone being friends and having a good time at work, like the heavily edited behind the scenes for Disney movies.

That said, what this person did was obviously unprofessional even if the camera was off.

Let's be outraged without context! Works for everyone! All the time!

@speedball I support you comrade! He shall fail and Nintendo shall install a gaming fan who knows how business works!

@MisterDevil thank you, friend!

@KruToy_MooDuck
That’s interesting. I hope Russian gamers were able to get access to Wii, Wii U and 3DS virtual console and Switch Online NES games to play the Nintendo classic games that were never officially released in their region before the Wii.

@Don Of course we did. SNES was the first console by Nintendo to be sold officially, with the help of the same company that sold Dendys.

@NEStalgia you win the internets for that one lol and here I was going to call Nintendo, Limitendo or Nintendont.

Compare how polished and professional ANYTHING Nintendo of America or Europe does either live or recorded over the last 30 years to THIS!!! The fact this happened on an OFFICIAL Nintendo stream is absolutely reprehensible and unforgivable honestly. If Mr. Yamauchi was still alive this clown shoes would've been fired on the spot!