With a couple of well-performing handhelds leading its charge back into the good graces of gamers over the past few years, Nintendo has a lot going for it, alongside a lot of great titles.
Part of that turnaround has been solid relationships across the supply chain that the Japanese giant has built. However, a recent lecture at NYU from Reggie Fils-Aimé, the former president of Nintendo America, has shed some light on how that may have been jeopardized in the early stages of exploring one with Amazon, which was looking to find its footing in the gaming space.
“Amazon’s mentality back then is they wanted to have the lowest price out in the marketplace, even lower than Walmart. And 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 organization, and essentially, 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, ‘You know that’s illegal, right? I can’t do that.’ You know you get silence on the other end, ‘but this is what I want.’”
“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 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,” he said
It’s always heartening to see an established presence in the industry stand on principle, and things have probably panned out fairly well for Nintendo, considering that Amazon recently shut the doors on Luna. Meanwhile, the list of Switch 2 titles continues to grow with every passing month, while the console itself proves even more successful than its predecessor. This whole incident would certainly explain why the Nintendo Switch 2 was missing from Amazon when it launched last year.
Overall, it’s an interesting insight into the rather tumultuous relationship they’ve shared over the years, and how Fils-Aimé ultimately handled a tense situation.