Former Nintendo US President Reggie Fils-Aime on strategy behind developing NES and SNES classics: ‘We did that to…’

Former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé has revealed the reason behind the company's launch of the NES and SNES Classic Editions. He said the Japanese gaming company did it as a business strategy to sustain sales during the Wii U's declining years. Speaking at the NYU Game Centre Lecture Series this month, Reggie said the miniature retro consoles were introduced to maintain volume sales during holiday seasons when the Wii U was struggling commercially. Explaining the thinking behind the products, Reggie said (as reported by Nintendo Everything), “The other thing we did is, in two successive years, we launched those micro legacy devices. If you remember those, right? The small NES and then the following year the small SNES. We did that to sustain our business because we needed something to sell at volume come the holiday season. So it was a series of commercial ideas, knowing full well that… you know, the Wii U was on life support.”Nintendo launched the NES Classic Edition in 2016 with 30 built-in games, followed by the SNES Classic Edition in 2017. Both arrived during the final phase of the Wii U lifecycle, a period when the company was dealing with weaker hardware performance after an initial drop in console sales.The comments provide insight into Nintendo’s approach during the Wii U era, when the company also experimented with other changes, including ending the 8GB Wii U model due to lower consumer interest and increasing collaboration with independent game developers.The NES and SNES Classic Editions recreated older Nintendo systems in compact hardware, each with pre-installed games. The products became an alternative revenue source as Nintendo prepared for the transition beyond the Wii U period.Some Nintendo fans had expected similar releases featuring legacy platforms such as the N64 or Game Boy. However, Nintendo has not expanded the strategy further, with classic titles later becoming accessible through the Nintendo Switch ecosystem.Separately, Reggie also discussed past tensions between Nintendo and Amazon during the Wii and DS era, saying the companies stopped working together after the retailer sought, he said, an “illegal” arrangement tied to pricing support.According to Reggie, Amazon wanted additional financial support from Nintendo to offer lower prices than competitors.Reggie said, “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.”Nintendo and Amazon have paused and resumed business relationships multiple times over the years. The companies later renewed cooperation around the launch of the Nintendo Switch 2, according to previous reports.