Nintendo dev leaves company, heads to Microsoft

by David Hinkle { May 8th 2008 at 4:00PM }

For those of you who keep track of developers and programmers like children keep track of baseball cards, this bit of news is going to be old hat to you. For the rest of the Nintendo loyal, prepare to light some torches and sharpen some pitchforks, because longtime programmer Colin Reed has bailed on Nintendo and taken up a position at Microsoft.

Reed was with Nintendo for 11 years, working on such titles as Metroid Prime: Hunters and Pikmin. He now joins Microsoft's Turn-10, an internal studio that is responsible for the Forza Motorsport line-up of games.

Tags: colin-reed, forza-motorsport-2, metroid, metroid-prime-hunters, microsoft, pikmin

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Roto13 @ May 8th 2008 4:18PM

A programmer? You mean... like a code monkey?

Anticrawl @ May 8th 2008 5:00PM

Haha, yeah he was just a code monkey. No offense to programmers but any cool tricks or talents he had as a programmer would have been picked up by his peers so really he's just a faceless man filling another seat. Hope he has fun typing endless code under a different name, I'm sure that will be rewarding.

THe Shit @ May 8th 2008 4:30PM

I dont blame him. Im a future designer (starts courses in Sept) and Nintendo is slowly starting to piss me off as a company. But everyone else out there is better than EA. Fuck EA.

ryan @ May 8th 2008 4:53PM

Why do they piss you off? (Serious question, btw)

ryan @ May 8th 2008 4:53PM

Why does Nintendo piss you off? (Serious question, btw)

Also, if this is like a triple post, I blame dsfanboy.

ryan @ May 8th 2008 4:54PM

God dammit.

acefondu @ May 8th 2008 4:59PM

That series of posts was hilarious. I don't know why, it just made me laugh.

New_Pornographer @ May 8th 2008 5:56PM

It's amazing to see so many enlightened people comment on this story without a clue what the hell they are talking about. I know its a lot to ask as the internet is notorious for breeding ignorant idiots but it really takes the cake when a videogame website focussed on Nintendo attracts knuckledragging dullards who don't:

a) Know what making a videogame actually involves
b)The importance of programming in the production of a game
c) The history of Nintendo, or specifically in this context, the history of Colin Reed working in the company.

Colin worked way back on 1080 snowboarding as one of the main programmers with fellow Englishman Giles Goddard. However, the game was developed in Kyoto at Nintendo EAD, which isn't reknowned for hiring a lot of gaijin development staff and clearly highlights the calibre of Colin as a programmer with considerable skill.

There are interviews on the net with him concerning the development of Pikmin and also the programming techniques used in 1080 to give the game the graphics it has. Take your heads out of your behinds, use google and find them because you'll benefit immensely.

Good luck to Colin, MS obviously had to wave a considerable sum of cash under the mans' nose to make him jump ship. Congrats.