Nintendo of America’s former president, Reggie Fils-Aimè, has described how a request for “an obscene amount of support” from Amazon during the Wii and DS era ultimately led to the withdrawal of both systems from sale on the site.
Speaking at the NYU Game Centre lecture series (thanks, Eurogamer), File-Aimé states that an Amazon executive spoke with him to request enough financial support so that the company could undercut the likes of Walmart on price.
Fils-Aimé rejected the request outright, with Nintendo of America completely withdrawing both the Wii and DS from sale on Amazon. Here’s what he had to say:
“At that time, just in the Americas, I was selling ten million Wiis, DS’ a year. We’re driving a lot of revenue. We had a lot of scale. And, at the time, Amazon was looking to get bigger into the video game space. Amazon’s mentality back then was that they wanted to have the lowest price out in the marketplace, even lower than Walmart.
“One of their executives called me… Well, it was a conversation that got to me after it had progressed through all of the levels of my sales organisation, and essentially what Amazon wanted is an obscene amount of support – financial support – so they could have the lowest price and beat Walmart. I literally said to the executive, ‘You know that’s illegal? I can’t do that’. You know you get silence on the other end, and it’s like: ‘Well, but this is what I want.’
“And literally… Literally, we stopped selling to Amazon, and it’s because I wasn’t going to do something illegal. I wasn’t going to do something that would put at risk the relationship we have with our other retailers. But it also set the stage to say, ‘look, you’re not going to push me around. This is the way we do business’. And so, that’s how, over time, you build respect.”
“Jump forward a number of years, we’re getting ready to launch the Switch. We wanted every retailer to participate with us and go big, and Amazon was right there at the table. Supported the launch exceptionally well. But it was based on mutually beneficial approach that led to that type of strong business result.”
Pretty cool to hear Reggie being so assertive, right? The executive was a huge presence at Nintendo during his time at the company, ultimately retiring in 2019 during the height of the Switch. His successor, Doug Bowser, took over as president until 2025, after which he was then succeeded by current president Devon Pritchard.
What do you make of Reggie’s story here? Share your thoughts with a comment down below.