Dan Adelman Leaves Nintendo of America

The head of Nintendo’s indie department steps away to form his own company.

By Marc Deschamps. Posted 08/04/2014 15:00 Comment on this     ShareThis

While Wii U has struggled to appeal to major third party developers, indie games have managed to help fill the void. As a result, a number of strong titles have been released for the system, despite retail releases coming few and far between. Dan Adelman helped to build those in-roads between Nintendo of America and smaller publishers during his tenure with the company. At least until Friday, Adelman’s last day at Nintendo. Adelman took to Twitter this morning to announce his departure from Nintendo to form a new business helping independent game developers as a consultant.

Adelman’s comment about his Twitter use relates to a disagreement between the two last September. According to Gamasutra, Nintendo banned Adelman from Twitter following comments he made about frustrations regarding region locking of 3DS titles. In an interview between Adelman and Kotaku, Adelman stated that this wasn’t the first or last time that Nintendo felt uncomfortable about comments that he made publicly about the company.

“…every once in a while, I’d give an answer that people didn’t like, and some people would freak out, so they tried to scale things back. First they had me do interviews with someone from PR or marketing. Later they just decided that I shouldn’t be in the press at all anymore.”

Adelman’s departure certainly raises interesting questions about the future of indie releases on Wii U and 3DS. In the nine years he spent with the company, Adelman helped bring highly acclaimed titles such as Cave Story and World of Goo to Nintendo platforms. While some might see this as cause for concern, Adelman stated on his website today that he feels the Nintendo eShop is in good hands.

“People at Nintendo don’t need to be reminded that indie games are important. They play them every day. In fact, one of the reasons I decided to leave was that there were fewer and fewer new battles to wage. Everyone was getting on the same page and starting to work together like a well-oiled machine. What fun is getting into an argument if the other person already agrees with you?”

We’ve provided a link to Dan Adelman’s full interview at Kotaku below. Let us know what you think of his departure in the comments below!

Source: Kotaku

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