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The American face of Nintendo, President and Chief Operating Officer Reggie Fils-Aime, once said, "I'm about kicking ass, I'm about taking names."

Nintendo hasn't been kicking much ass over the past few years — the company posted a $456 million operating loss in its last fiscal year, its third loss in a row. Though the original Nintendo Wii console was a hit with consumers, the new version, Nintendo's Wii U, flopped.

Critics wonder why Nintendo doesn't take a leap by creating or licensing content for mobile devices many consumers already own.

Recently, Nintendo released Mario Kart 8 to rave reviews and more than a million sales in its first weekend. At this year's E3, or Electronic Entertainment Expo, the company announced a new intellectual property, Splatoon, a family friendly take on multiplayer third-person shooters (using paint guns instead of gun guns). Splatoon uses the GamePad to display a map that allows players to instantly teleport around the arena by touching a teammate's location.

NPR sat down with Reggie Fils-Aime at E3 in Los Angeles to ask him a range of questions about Nintendo's present and future.

People are saying that Nintendo is the underdog, since Sony's PlayStation and Microsoft's Xbox are selling better. What do you say when people say that?

Both of those other competitors have other business lines, so by definition we are a smaller company, so by definition we must be the underdog. In terms of sales, the fact of the matter is that the sales will ebb and flow with the momentum of the software. For us, we are seeing a lot of momentum in our business with the launch of Mario Kart 8. We believe with the pacing of launches that we have over the next number of weeks that we'll continue to see very strong momentum. For our competitors, much of the content they showed was 2015 content, so over the next number of months through this holiday we'll see in terms of who sells the most.

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To see the speed of technological innovation, look no further than a street corner. Hailing a cab from the street is less common in cities with Uber, a service that lets you request a ride with the simple tap of a mobile phone app.

The five-year-old company — now valued at $17 billion — is growing so fast that it's operating in 128 cities globally, on every continent except Antarctica. But its disruptive entrance to the market means it's facing some growing pains worldwide.

"In 128 of our cities, we've got regulatory issues in about 128 of our cities," says Justin Kintz, Uber's policy director for the Americas.

Unfair Playing Field

Cab drivers staged traffic-snarling anti-Uber protests across Europe on Wednesday. They say Uber isn't competing on a level playing field, since the service doesn't adhere to the same driver training, safety and pricing rules that regulate existing cabs. Similar fights are happening in American cities, too.

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A bill that would have let millions of people refinance their student loans at a lower interest rate has failed in the Senate, after Republicans objected that it included a tax on the wealthy to pay for it. The measure would have allowed people with older loans to benefit from today's low interest rates.

The bill from Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., didn't get past a procedural vote, falling by a 56-38 vote. Called the Bank on Students Emergency Loan Refinancing Act, it was shot down days after President Obama urged Congress to help ease the burden of student debt.

Noting that her bill had bipartisan support, Warren said today that she would continue the effort to help "40 million Americans out there who are trying to deal with $1.2 trillion in student loan debt."

Warren said people with student loans should be on the same footing as homeowners and small businesses that are allowed to refinance their loan obligations.

"Republicans objected to the so-called Buffett Rule, which would increase income tax raise rates on the rich who make most of their money off investments, so that they would pay the same rate as those earning wages," NPR's S.V. Date reports for our Newscast unit.

"Only three Republicans voted with Democrats to proceed with the bill," Date says, "not enough to clear the Senate's 60-vote threshold."

After the vote, Warren asked a pointed question of her colleagues:

"Today is a really good day for billionaires. For the 40 million people dealing with student loan debt, it wasn't such a good day. This raises the fundamental question: Who does Washington work for? Does it work for those who can hire armies of lobbyists to make sure that every single loophole in the tax code is protected for them? Or does it work for young people who are trying to get started in life?"

On Monday, President Obama unveiled a plan to ease the burden on those paying student loans, signing an executive order that caps borrowers' payments at 10 percent of their monthly income.

As NPR's Anya Kamenetz noted, the president's plan expands the Pay As You Earn program, which is hobbled by a serious flaw: "few people have actually signed up for it."