winner for plump Crecente look a like contest ?

Aww, but I like Vispi Bhopti. He won Total Gamer's Groinski award for the best name for a company representative. (It was a tough call. He was up a against a guy called "Burchin Urgin.")

Nintendo Australia should all be sacked as I have heard/read absolutely nothing in the way of any advertisement or promotion on the Wii. I hope this will change soon though. We do however get the occasional DS advert but that's all.

Hello Ninty Japan, sack these lazy bums PLEASE.

How do these people get jobs? He's the PR manager for god sake.

Crecente, lol.

Man, I'm so happy you've brought Nintendo of Australia's ineptitude into the spotlight. A complete and utter absence of advertising. A website that has been updated 5 times in the last 3 years (or thereabouts). Surly ill-equipped reps that don't really care about their product, leading to a complete lack of representation in most EBs and the like..
Nintendo Australia needs a real shake-up from the top down. Personality, initiative and energy is needed from Nintendo Australia management in order for them to claw back shelf-space from the budget PS2-ware that has taken over the games retailers in this country.

Nintendo Australia hasn't done anything since N64. I'm not quite sure what they're getting paid for.

What an asshat.

As an Australian, I can tell you that Nintendo Australia does next to nothing to promote games, or even get them released locally.

We still have not seen Trauma Center or Pheonix Wright released by a local company. We have to import through specialty shops, if at all.

Thanks to Australia being an english nation, we can get games for portables from the US easily enough, but for home consoles, we need to mod our consoles and import games, or import the consoles themselves, more often than not at a marked up price (though nothing like the markup Europeons see, I'll give them that).

We did have some Wii events locally in major cities (state capitals), but from the sound of things (living outside a major city I miss out on nearly everything) the events were often late and closed early, if they showed up at all.

What's more, Nintendo Australia refuses to support local gaming sites. Since 2004, the website I write for, or any other local website, has not recieved a single Nintendo title or item.

We have to buy the products ourselves and then review them.

I'm sorry to say, but this level of ignorance seems to be across the board at NAU.

The best thing Nintendo of Australia has done recently was releasing the DS Lite so early, a few days before America no less. This guy should not be allowed to speak to the press though if his quotes are so... inept sounding. He should know, or at least come up with a better reply than that.

Nintendo of Australia allways seem to let the ball slip badly when it comes to just about everything. Though it seems they are trying a bit harder with the pokemon tours and wii promotional tours.

I was pleased to be rung today by "Toys R Us" confirming my pre order and which free game I would like (need for speed carbon) Can't wait till launch =D

I wouldn't judge Nintendo Australia too harshly (although Bhopti should definitely be better informed). I've heard rumours that they suffer from the killer combination of having 1. basically no automony, and 2. being largely ignored by Nintendo Japan.

You know what is a joke? This spin on a harmless interview.

Kotaku, you just made the list

Uh oh.

Now we're in trouble.

Nintendo Australia SUCK but ! but ! like Zenbot said. It is true they are ignored by Nintendo Japan (and also America). They also need approval of any promotional stuff through them. They are just a front to sell things in Australia.

I'm sure he just misspoke. When he said "I don't know", I'm sure he meant "I don't care". Honestly, I've never seen a better attempt by a company to come in last place than Nintendo of Australia. Being a Nintendo fan here is tantamount to eating broken glass while taking a match to your own ball-sack.

Hey guys ease up on Nintendo Aus, I'm sure they are not in the easiest of postions.

You see for the most part we only get news or new games after Japan, US and Europe. So for Vispi to know when we are gonna get new games, hes gotta be told by someone higher up.

As for Trauma Center not coming to Australia, how the hell is that Nintendo Aus's fault, Atlus is the one who made the damn game, you would think it would be up to them to release it down here, Not Nintendo Aus. Now Nintendo Aus can ask them all they want about the game, but unless Atlus decide to release the game down here, there is squat Nintendo Aus can do.

I think honestly this year Nintendo has done more for us then they have in a long long time. Two big tours, the Wii events, eGames, getting the DSLite early, plus many many things. I'll agree it would be nice if we could have more, but until stuff changes with the way Australia gets treated by Nintendo US or Japan, theres not much Nintendo Australia can do about it, so just ease up on them.

As for Nintendo Aus refusing to help Aus gaming sites thats a lie, I know a few sites in Aus who have great working relations with them, respect goes both way, and if you bad mouth them, then sure as hell they ain't gonna help you.

www.entertainmentwise.com/news?id=24925 <- Let us know how the world recieved the Wii - this Sunday!

I made a similar comment to yours, Luke, on Aussie-Nintendo and the site deleted it... I think I said he "never knows crap" but oh well.

Anyway, if you read the whole interview he is asked how he got his position and responds that he started in the pay per minute call centre. How qualified can you get to manage an companies PR for an entire country? Apparently not very.

What a bonehead... I can do a better job that this clown.

I can't do a better jot than this Crecente's pilosity ripper (not literally!)

But at least it means that I still have a chance to find a job in the videogames PR department

Interviewer: What company do you work for?
Vispi Bhopti: I don't know what the entire name of the company, but I think it starts with an O. What I do know is that we've got a lot of games, we've got 26, I'm pretty sure, games in my office.... And, you know, whether or not there's this game or that game, or that particular game - I don't know which particular games they're going to end up bringing to Australia. But it's not a sort of, umm, you know, the sky falling or anything like that. At the end of the day, it starts with an O... I think.

yeah, we dont get advertising for squat.
Im quite concerned that we wont see Trauma Center Wii down here, i really hope we get Wing Island.
I'll probably end up with an NTSC console at some point, i mean, we didnt even get Chibi Robo, or Odama, Ikaruga was a rare commodity.
England sucks to buy things out of thanks to our lousy exchange rates, i'm glad companies like Activision seem to be buying people up to distribute, i think they recently bought Capcom distribution for Australia, maybe Okami will come out before March, i already imported it, but its nice to know people who dont mod for imports can play it too.
Sux 2 B Us

At least Nintendo Australia are better than Nintendo Korea!

His interview as a whole was very unprofessional. He tended to waffle on and sound very unconvincing "but yeah".

Kudos for him to get where he is, but you would think after so many years he would be able to present himself better.

Oh and the "we don't get any attention from Nintendo japan" crap, oh please. Perhaps if you did a better job and acted more professional they would pay more attention.

I'll stick to importing thanks Nintendo! I am just waiting for Datel to make a wii region free boot disc!

There's a Nintendo Australia???

He would rather flirt with the ladies, then actually do his job talking to the media.

/rant

That interview isn't really a fair one to rate him on. That was hardly a professional situation. An Aussie-Nintendo guy just came up to him and asked him a few questions on the floor of a recent game show. He was probably a little tired from all the things he's had to do that day and wasn't expecting the "interview" to be considered print worthy or rather used to base a lot of information on. It was more like a "Hey, how's it going?" kind of thing from what I understand. Watch the footage.

To speak in vispis defence, i too interviewed him (its in video form and currently being edited so not linkage as of yet sorry) and hes not the incapible figure hes being made out to be for forgetting one fact list out of many amongst a large trade show. Alltogether he was one of the more friendly and accomidating people i interviewed during the expo (which includes all of the big 3).