Reggie Fils-Aimé, the former president of Nintendo of America, has shed light on why the company stopped selling Wii and DS consoles through Amazon in the past. The relationship between the two companies has been quite tumultuous over the years, leading to several interruptions in their collaboration. One of the earliest instances occurred during the era of the Wii and DS, Nintendo’s best-selling console before the Switch.
According to Fils-Aimé, Amazon presented an “illegal” demand. Essentially, the online retail giant “wanted an unreasonable amount of support” to “be able to offer the lowest price and beat Walmart.” Although Nintendo pointed out that this was not permissible, it was precisely what Amazon desired. Reggie shared this during a talk at the Game Developers Conference at New York University.
“Back then, in America alone, Nintendo was selling 10 million DS units a year, generating a lot of revenue. We had significant scale. And at that time, Amazon was looking to expand into the video game sector. Amazon’s mentality back then was to have the lowest price in the market, even lower than Walmart. And one of their executives called me… well, it was a conversation that reached me after it went through all the levels of my sales organization, and basically what Amazon wanted was an obscene amount of support, financial support, so they could have the lowest price and beat Walmart. I literally said to the executive, ‘Do you know that’s illegal, right? I can’t do that,’ you know, you get silence from the other side, ‘but this is what I want.'”
We literally stopped selling to Amazon, and it was because we weren’t going to do anything illegal. We weren’t going to do anything that jeopardized the relationship we had with other retailers. But it also set the stage to say, ‘Look, you’re not going to bully me. This is how we do business.’ And that’s how, over time, respect is built.
In 2024, Nintendo and Amazon once again ceased working together. However, they reached a truce for the launch of the Nintendo Switch 2. Difficult days for Mr. Bezos – although not mentioned directly for obvious reasons –.
