Reggie Fils-Aimé has been at it again. The big bruiser of an executive was boss of Nintendo of America from 2006 to 2019, and became the unlikely face of Nintendo for a spell thanks to his prowling, confident, meme-ready presentations at E3. Now retired, he loves to dine out on anecdotes about his successes there — and this week, he’s been bragging about the time he showed Amazon the door.
The story, as told during an onstage conversation at NYU Game Center, goes like this. During the tail end of the Wii and Nintendo DS generation — probably in the early 2010s — Reggie got a call from an executive at Amazon who was asking for “an obscene amount of financial support” so that Amazon could have an even lower retail price on the two massive-selling consoles than Walmart. Reggie countered that this would be illegal. The Amazon executive wouldn’t back down, so Nintendo stopped selling to Amazon at all.
“It set the stage to say, ‘Look, you’re not going to push me around,'” Reggie said. “‘This is the way we do business.'” Taking your ball and walking away from the biggest online retailer in the universe. Can you imagine!
A caveat here: Reggie has always loved nothing better than a bit of braggadocio, and making himself look tough and principled at the same time. He’s also a good storyteller, and storytellers exaggerate. This story may not be true, or not completely true.
