Nintendo Treehouse, a product development division of Nintendo of America focused on localization and translation, has launched an official blog.
Nintendo Treehouse initially formed in the late '90s. In short, they are the bridge between Japanese games and the American audience - they are directly responsible for translation and localization of Nintendo titles. They also have a division focusing on training Nintendo of America marketers on how to handle the campaigns for upcoming games and a division specifically dedicated to the Pokemon brand. Originally, Nintendo Treehouse had two employees who translated games and provided feedback on development through audio-only conference calls and e-mail. Today, the Treehouse team has over 50 people dedicated to localization alone.
The core reason for the creation of the blog is to fill the gap between content updates put out by the division in videos. Senior Product Marketing Manager at Nintendo Bill Trinen states that they have been looking for new ways to provide information to fans of Nintendo games. He concedes that they won't necessarily cover every IP and they won't pull the curtain back too much, but they will nonetheless try to provide interesting behind-the-scenes content for upcoming Nintendo products.
The blog will contain content from multiple people over the coming months and years. The first post was handled by Bill Trinen, and the second post was written by Localization Manager Nate Bihldorff. He makes a point of stating that a lot of their work (especially with localization) tends to be kept under cover as they are working on projects that haven't even been announced in the West yet. What exactly we'll see and how much we'll learn about upcoming Nintendo titles remains to be seen, so keep an eye on the blog for future posts about upcoming Nintendo products!
What do you think of how Nintendo Treehouse handles the localization of Nintendo Games? What would hope or expect to see them post on this blog? Let us know in the comments below!
