Reggie claims Amazon pushed illegal demands

Amazon and Nintendo have had a weirdly bad relationship for years. The new wrinkle is Reggie Fils-Aimé saying the break really started when Amazon pushed for terms he viewed as illegal. That matters now because the old feud lines up with a much newer mess — Amazon largely missing the Switch 2’s U.S. launch window after a separate dispute over pricing and third-party sellers. Put simply, a long-simmering retail fight is suddenly easier to see. ### What did Reggie actually say? At an NYU Game Center lecture, the former Nintendo of America president described an early clash from the Wii and DS era. His version is blunt: Amazon wanted financial support from Nintendo so it could promise the lowest prices in the market and undercut rivals like Walmart. Reggie said he viewed those asks as illegal and rejected them, and that refusal helped poison the relationship. ### Why call the demands “illegal”? The important point is not that a court ruled on this specific episode — there’s no public case tied to Reggie’s remarks. The issue is the kind of arrangement he was describing. If a giant retailer wants a supplier to fund below-market pricing in a way that disadvantages competitors, that starts sounding less like normal co-op marketing and more like a competition-legal finding. ### How does Switch 2 enter the story? Because Amazon’s U.S. storefront was conspicuously missing the Switch 2 and some Nintendo first-party products around launch. Bloomberg’s 2025 report said Nintendo stopped selling through Amazon US after third-party merchants were importing stock from Southeast Asia and listing it below Nintendo’s intended U.S. pricing. Amazon allegedly tried fixes like authenticity labels, but the two sides did not settle it. ### Did Nintendo and Amazon agree with that report? No — and this is the catch. Follow-up coverage from IGN and VGC said both Nintendo and Amazon denied Bloomberg’s account about why products disappeared from Amazon US. So there are really two layers here: Reggie’s firsthand story about an older dispute, and a newer Switch 2 dispute whose exact mechanics remain contested in public. ### Why would Nintendo care so much about pricing? Because Nintendo still sells a lot of physical hardware and boxed games, and price discipline matters to that whole retail machine. If gray-market or unauthorized sellers can undercut official listings on the country’s biggest online storefront, Nintendo loses control over launch optics, retailer relationships, and margins. That is especially sensitive during a major console debut. ### Was Switch 2 hurt by Amazon missing out? Not in the obvious way. Nintendo said the Switch 2 sold more than 3.5 million units worldwide in its first four days after the June 5, 2025 launch, making it the fastest-selling Nintendo hardware start ever. So the launch was huge anyway. But Amazon’s absence still mattered because it showed Nintendo was willing to sacrifice reach to protect how its products are sold. ### So what’s really new here? The new thing is not a lawsuit or a settlement. It’s Reggie attaching a clear origin story to a feud that had mostly looked like rumor and retail oddity. His comments make the Switch 2 standoff feel less like a one-off logistics spat and more like the latest round in a 20-year fight over who controls price, presentation, and leverage. ### Bottom line Basically, Reggie is saying the Nintendo-Amazon rift started with a demand Nintendo would not entertain. The newer Switch 2 clash seems to involve different facts, but the same core issue — Amazon wants flexibility and scale, while Nintendo wants tight control over how its products reach customers.