I see it as a good thing that she clearly doesn’t take her job home with her like Reggie does.
He’s a character but shouldn’t be a standard by which others are judged.

I’m suprised she’s made it to where she is in the industry, seems to be relatively male dominated. Guess marketing is quite a neutral area- no doubt it will be a long time before there is a female gunning for head of Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft entertainment.

Who says we don’t like here?!?

In this interview she’s playful, personable, humorous, coy, teasing, and generally a wonderful human being. It’s such a fun interview to watch, and, heck, she confirms that the Opera browser will be built-in with the Wii hardware!

At one point she comments as how the hottest she’s ever been was when she was photoshopped onto Joanna Dark’s body. Mrs. Kaplan, you do yourself a disservice. You’re 1000 times the woman that Mrs. Dark has become!

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

Carmine, I think a lot of people got pissed of with her pre-E3 when she would be asked a question like “How will the pricing structure of the Nintendo back catalogue be different from xbox 360?” and she would reply something to the effect of: we’re looking at a variety of different options for creating games on all sorts of different levels and the new controller will offer people new ways to play.

Obviously to some extent her hands were tied but there is no need to condesecend readers- just say something like, well i’m unable to comment on that but.. followed by some hinting like everyone else does.

That was a horrible interview. I thought Billy, formerly of Planet Gamecube, would be able to do a much better job. It was such a waste of time and super boring. Perrin even says so.

I’d imagine now Reggie has moved up to President of Nintendo of America she will be the president of marketing now too.

uninformative and boring.

Boy tough crowd.

I love how they were actually…you know…talking like REAL people and *gasp* even finding something to laugh about! Spin is spin, but spin that’s done this well is almost entertainment!

I mean, seriously, they hit on booth-babes, women’s self-image (Kaplan asking photoshoppers to make her more attractive), cute guys(with or without glasses), they make jokes about PR spin (we’re spinning!!!), she teases about a microphone, Billy points out that she must be tired, their camera man gets distracted by pretty girls… this is a heck of a lot more than an interview! This is an E3 experience with two people who are a joy to watch talking!

Or is the art of idle banter dead and gone? Do we want caricatured automatons who dispense information? Do we want perfunctorial mouthpieces, soulless hacks, and people who exude only the artificial warmth of a “My specs are better than your specs” glow?

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

Boring and uninformative is the norm for Kaplan interviews, unfortunately.

Uh oh! We’re spinning again.

Great interview. Basically confirms the microphone thing. Lots o hidden hints in there! She even refers back to the hint of the microphone!

I liked the whole laid-back style of the interview. However, Billy just seemed unprepared, he didn’t even have a pad of default questions. It seems as if the guys at GI know what kind of person Perrin is and just drew straws to see who would have to “interview” her. I found some of the parts very amusing and it’s comforting to know that she really enjoys her job. Granted, this one was a little too long. The interview she had with Matt Cassamasina was awesome, but once again, he came prepared with a pad of questions. As far as pure “boring” goes, I think that it is FAR MORE boring to watch an interview of a Japanese-speaking developer by an English-speaking interviewer. Because of the language barrier and going through a third person, the interviewer and interviewee don’t make any connection at all and it just turns into watching a slow press release (this is with the expection of people like Miyamoto or Kojima that can actually understand English but would rather answer through a translator).

Miyamoto answers through a translater because his english is heavily accented. He probably thinks it sounds very unnatural to any English speaker. He may also be more comfortable just hearing English and answering in Japanese.

There are Japanese who can speak English without any accent whatsoever. They often are the translators hired by many companies to translate at business negotations etc.

Iwata speaks at every conferance in English and he sounds fairly okay but obviously a rehearsed speech is much easier to do in a different language then on the fly in an interview.

I agree with Carmine in that I don’t want mindless question and answer sessions. I understand that her hands are tied with regard to what info she can give directly. However, I also agree with another poster that even within the casual banter, the interviewer seemed a bit underprepared. Yes, Perrin is spinning, everyone knows that, but instead of constantly saying during the interview that she is spinning, work to try to pull her out of her spin. Perrin was talking and flowing and was begging for better questions. A good interview would have been like subtle sparring match as the interviewer asks questions within questions that allow us to get info simply based on how Perrin spins. She is willing to give information if you can ask the question in such a way that she is able to answer with more direct yet cryptic wording. Billy didn’t give her much opportunity for this even though she clearly was trying to get him going with all the side talk about girls and guys.

Also, when did Perrin get so stinking hot? Wow.

Yeah, Perrin is way cute. She’s got a cute personality. I saw her at E3 and wanted to say hello or something, but she was busy enjoying some ice cream and seemed relaxed, I didn’t want to bother her. E3 is a very busy time for those Nintendo folks.

I really enjoyed watching this, actually… but I have to admit, if I was in Billy’s place, I would have came a bit better prepared with questions.

Would it help? I think it’s precisely the tough, interesting questions that make Perrin shut down converstation and start repeating memorised PR nonsense that doesn’t even relate to what you’re asking her about. Damn.

I’m torn, on the one hand it’s a cute lighthearted interview where she’s just not allowed to give out any new info, on the other hand Billy comes off as an unprepared whiney fanboy. “why isn’t smash bros playable?” I mean, they had months to prepare for E3, if they wanted to give more info, they would have.

I mean come on, she basically admitted at the start the Wii controller had a microphone. Eventhough she said yeah it’s not, she looked busted, but recovered quickly and he never noticed.

You know, Montagna, now I read your post again, it sounds like the question you would have been regarding her phone number.

@Touch FuzZy, Get DizZy - hehe, well it would be worth a try?

I dont think he’s looking at Wiimote in that pick.

Nah, I’m probably too young for her, and I don’t think my girlfriend would be so thrilled about that.

But really, there are plenty of questions he could have asked but didn’t. “Are these buttons names final? Have the Wii colors been decided? Is it likely that North America will recieve different colors than Japan? What is the expansion on the classic controller for? In what ways do you plan on advertising the Wii to reach new consumers?” … etc.

That was incredibly boring and pointless. Billy had no idea what to say, and repeatedly blamed Perrin by calling her out on “spin.” In fact she seemed very down-to-earth. Obviously there are a lot of things she’s not allowed to talk about. I hate interviews that are just badgering about release dates and resolutions. There are a million interesting things he could have asked, like how various design desicions were arrived at, what she thought of past marketing campaigns and how old lessons can be applied to the current market, how NOA interacts with Kyoto, etc. This interview is as good an example as I’ve seen of how far video game enthusiast media is from real journalism. The guy goes all the way to e3 just to badger this lady about trivial details he knows she’s not allowed to tell him.

Personally, I agree with Dave. I think a major reason that gaming isn’t considered a serious thing by the general media is because the mainstream gaming media is a mess. They don’t treat it the way it can or should be treated at times. This is a real prime example of that. I’m all for having fun, but five pages of gunk is too much.

Wow,what an interview. Yes Kaplan is hot. Here though, she’s like a cat toying with a mouse but doesn’t want to kill it. This guy got owned by her spin.

And yes, the interview by Matt Cassamasina was great. You could tell those 2 had a good connection going.

Kaplan is a great flirt from what i can tell.