Reggie Fils-aimé Cut Amazon Off Over Walmart Pricing Request
Reggie Fils-Aimé said Amazon wanted enough financial support to undercut Walmart on price, and Nintendo of America walked away from Wii and DS sales on the site. He told an Amazon executive, “You know that’s illegal? I can’t do that.” The break came during a period when Nintendo was moving ten million Wiis and DS’ a year in the Americas.
Amazon’s pricing request
“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,” Fils-Aimé said at the NYU Game Centre lecture series. He described that request as a demand to help Amazon lower prices in a way he would not accept.
“You know that’s illegal? I can’t do that,” he said. “And literally... Literally, we stopped selling to Amazon, and it’s because I wasn’t going to do something illegal.” He added, “I wasn’t going to do something that would put at risk the relationship we have with our other retailers.”
Wii and DS sales stopped
At that time, Nintendo of America was moving ten million Wiis and DS’ a year in the Americas, which made Amazon one part of a much larger retail network. The split was not just about one site losing inventory. It also protected Nintendo’s pricing structure with other retailers that sold the same systems.
“Look, you’re not going to push me around. This is the way we do business,” he said, summing up the line he drew. For readers tracking retail distribution, the practical effect was simple: Wii and DS shoppers could no longer rely on Amazon for those systems once Nintendo pulled back.
Switch launch brought Amazon back
Years later, Nintendo prepared to launch the Switch and wanted every retailer to participate. Fils-Aimé said Amazon “supported the launch exceptionally well,” and that the later partnership rested on “mutually beneficial approach that led to that type of strong business result.” The shift shows that the companies did not stay frozen in the earlier dispute.
The friction point was price, but the eventual reset was access: Nintendo needed broad retail support for a major launch, and Amazon proved useful when the relationship was built on terms both sides could accept. For business readers, the sequence is the lesson — a retailer can lose two product lines over pricing demands and still become valuable again when the launch math changes.
