Nintendo game localiser fired after podcast comments

Nintendo game localiser fired after podcast comments

One of the unfortunate side effects of our more connected world, is that whenever anyone does anything, everyone knows about it - including their boss. That's what happened with the case of Chris Pranger, who was working for Nintendo as a localisation expert - porting over and translating Japanese games to English and other speaking countries - when he went on the Part-Time-Gamers podcast and made comments about the practice.

Nintendo didn't like that, so it fired him.

This has been confirmed by Pranger on various social networking accounts, though he has since removed the posts. In them he apologised for his statements and said that his firing was entirely his own fault, though really it's hard to understand how what he said was that bad.

In the podcast Pranger discussed the localisation process and said that as much as they would loved to bring more Japanese games to Western markets, the potential for revenue from them was often simply not worth the cost. He did say though that sometimes Nintendo would "bite the bullet" and port one over anyway, if it was highly requested enough.

It seems a shame that Nintendo would respond this way, as despite being quite a secretive company, this doesn't paint it in a bad light. If anything, it explains why we don't get to play more of its Japan based games - it just isn't financially viable.

[Cheers GoNintendo]

Image source: Gage Skidmore