Reggie Fils-Aimé, former Nintendo president and meme king, took part in a revealing gaming roundtable discussion leading up to the New York Game Awards. He was joined by other former industry leaders to discuss the video game industry’s past and where it is going.
Many topics were covered over the almost three-and-a-half-hour stream, but one stuck out in particular. Fils-Aimé was asked what one of his defining moments at Nintendo was. In his answer, he talked about how important it was for the Switch to succeed after the lackluster response to the Wii U.
“People forget, when the Wii U launched, the performance over that life cycle was so poor, I mean it was the worst-selling platform, I think maybe Virtual Boy was a little bit worse, but Wii U under-performed pretty radically in the marketplace,” Fils-Aimé said. “Along with so many of the other things I was part of, but the Switch really was a make or break product for the company and luckily it was a hit.”
Fils-Aimé says that it was an important learning opportunity and really impacted his career: “You know, Nintendo has done so many innovations in the space … I think what Nintendo did with the Switch, after the poor performance of Wii U, I think to me and what I was part of, that’s my lasting memory.”
Regardless of the Wii U’s performance, it isn’t hard to see how important the Switch was to bringing Nintendo back. It is currently sitting at 68 million sales worldwide and that number continues to climb during the COVID-19 pandemic.
You can check out the whole stream here.
