A couple of days ago, at Nintendo's WiiWare preview, senior marketing director Laurent Fischer responded to the question about many gamer's need for a hard drive for the Wii by saying "only geeks and otaku" are interested in such a problem. Well, gamers over on sister site GameGrep didn't like it, gamers on videogaming247 didn't like it, and their writer David Jaffe especially didn't like it:

“This statement, especially coming from a marketing person, reeks of one of two things:

“A - Arrogance at a level that should make Nintendo - if this statement reflects the core of the company - very ashamed.

“B - A marketing person who has no real clue about games and thinks she’s being cute and coy by dissing the ‘geeks’ cause she thinks the mainstream loves them now. If this is the case, she really needs someone to sit her down and explain to her which side her fucking toast has been buttered on for years and will eventually get back to being buttered on.”

Of course, Laurent is a man (I made the mistake myself), but it's all good.

Fischer recently apologized for the comment:

“I have huge respect for those who, like me, share a common passion for Nintendo and want to make it clear that I would never use and I didn’t use this terminology in such a context or way to cause offence. I regret that this misunderstanding has created such offence and disappointment within the community.”

I'm visualizing Nintendo standing behind him with a whip for this one. Kwapsh! Say you're sorry, Fischer, yaaaa! Anyway, tone does account for a lot, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. Nevertheless, at a press conference, one should be aware that everything said is potentially going to end up in print, and if it's controversial enough, all over the Internet. You know how it is. Does he mean it though? Hard to say. Weird though he says it was a misunderstanding but doesn't explain exactly how it was meant to be interpreted. How about you? How does this affect your perception of Nintendo, if at all? Normally I'd say, "he's just one guy," but this was at a press conference.