Reggie Fils-Aimé, former President of Nintendo of America, has revealed that Nintendo pulled out of selling through Amazon in the late 2000s after the e-commerce giant asked the company to do something he described as flatly illegal – and he said no without hesitation. Fils-Aimé made the disclosure during a lecture at NYU, as reported by Kotaku, offering the clearest explanation yet for a retail rift that has quietly shaped Nintendo’s distribution strategy for nearly two decades.
According to Fils-Aimé, Amazon was pushing hard to expand into video games and wanted to undercut Walmart on price – with Nintendo’s money footing the bill. “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… 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.'” Nintendo’s response was unambiguous: walk away entirely. “Literally we stopped selling to Amazon,” Fils-Aimé confirmed, “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.”
The fallout has had a long tail. This conflict traces back to the era of the Wii and Nintendo DS – two of Nintendo’s best-selling hardware platforms in history – when Amazon was rapidly evolving from a bookshop into a retail juggernaut. The tension hasn’t faded: the Nintendo Switch 2 was notably absent from Amazon at launch while pre-orders appeared across competing retailers, a pattern consistent with Nintendo’s historically firm stance on pricing and retail partnerships.
It’s worth noting that Amazon’s gaming ambitions have not exactly flourished in the years since – its Luna cloud gaming service shut down last month without refunds, and gaming leadership departed at the start of 2026. Nintendo, meanwhile, walked away from one of the world’s biggest retail platforms rather than compromise its relationships or legality, and the company is doing just fine. That’s either admirable principles or an exceptionally expensive point to prove – possibly both. Did Nintendo make the right call, or did walking away from Amazon cost the company more than it was worth? Sound off in the comments below, and keep your eyes on GameLuster for more Nintendo coverage.
