Former Nintendo exec reveals why it stopped selling Wii and DS systems to Amazon

Reggie Fils-Aime, former president of Nintendo of America, has shared behind-the-scenes information as to why the company stopped selling Wii and DS systems to Amazon back in the day.

Over the years, the two companies have had a bit of tumultuous relationship. It’s caused the two sides to stop working together on multiple occasions. One of the first instances of this was during the Wii and DS era.

According to Reggie, Amazon had an “illegal” demand. Essentially, the retailer “wanted an obscene amount of support” so that it “could have the lowest price and beat Walmart.” While Nintendo pointed out that this couldn’t be allowed, that’s what Amazon wanted. There was an impasse here with both sides not wanting to budge.

Reggie said the following during a NYU Game Centre Lecture Series talk:

“At that time, you know, just in the Americas, I was selling ten million 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 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 is wanted 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.”

As recently as 2024, there was another year in which Nintendo and Amazon had stopped working together. However, they patched things up for the Nintendo Switch 2 launch. Information later came to light about what happened to cause the two sides to pause their relationship.