Gio Corsi has revealed that he has joined Nintendo of America.
In a tweet over the last week, Gio shared this message, with a picture of himself and his dad wearing Mario and Luigi hats:
“This week I began my new gig filled with fun & adventure! I’ve joined the @NintendoAmerica AAA 3rd Party Portfolio Mgmt crew to help great teams bring their amazing games to this legendary platform!
On a personal note, Papa Mario is very proud!
Here we go!!!”
Gio Corsi’s career in video games goes all the way back in 1996, when he worked as a QA tester for Electronic Arts, but he briefly took detours away from the industry to work in computer animation for Mainframe Entertainment. He returned to video games in 2005, and bounced around different studios, until joining Sony in 2013.
He spent five of his six years in the company as Senior Director of Third Party Production and Developer Relations, and was promoted to head of Global Second Party Games the year that he left the company.
Corsi is remembered well by Sony fans for his work to promote the PlayStation Vita, and his #BuildTheList online campaign, where he asked fans online to suggest games that Sony could bring to their platforms. Corsi made the Vita a big platform for indies at the time, providing a support system for devs to bring games to their system.
But that’s not all. Corsi was a point of contact between Sony and Ys Net during the crowdfunding and production of Shenmue 3. Sony provided production, marketing, and publishing support for the title. While the final product didn’t quite live up to expectations, its successful crowdfund and the initial hype could be credited in great part to Corsi.
In a more successful turn, Corsi’s #BuildTheList campaign led to Sony prompting Sega to localize Yakuza 5 for the West. Which means the Yakuza / RGG / Like A Dragon renaissance happened partly because of him.
On the flip side, Corsi was a company man in Sony, and not everything he did benefited the fans. Some fans will remember when his part in the Sony – Epic correspondence on Fortnite crossplay was revealed. He said in an email, “cross-platform play is not a slam dunk no matter the size of the title.”
Still, Corsi is rightly best known for his experience working with PlayStation’s second party and third party partner studios, as the list of games he received a special thanks for, in MobyGames, shows. Corsi is a very good get for Nintendo of America, and he seems to be someone that can get the company’s long-standing third party AAA support issue resolved.
Congrats go out to Corsi and Nintendo of America, and we look forward to seeing what they will show us in the near future.
