Former Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime opens up about a game collaboration with rapper Kanye West that never happened. In a charity podcast, Fils-Aime talks about an offer made by Yeezy, that he had to ‘politely decline’.
Kanye West wanted to make a game with Nintendo
On the ‘Talking Games with Reggie & Harold’ podcast, Fils-Aime opens up about a Nintendo Kanye West collaboration that never happened. During the E3 gaming event ‘many years ago’, West met with the then President of Nintendo (America division). Fils-Aime recalls trying to politely decline the offer, NintendoEverything writes.
Part of it was talking about what he was up to. He was experimenting with a piece of video game content and he wanted reactions to it. He comes out and says, ‘I want to work with Nintendo. We had so many different projects at Nintendo going on, the possibility of doing something with Kanye just wasn’t there, and so I had to find a way to politely decline this opportunity to work with him.
I told him, ‘Kanye, you don’t want to work with us because we’re tough, we’re hard. All we do is push for the very best content. We would not be the type of partner you would want to work with.’ And he looks at me and says, ‘Reggie, you’re exactly the type of partner I want because of that reason!’ It’s like, ‘Oh my gosh.
It’s unclear exactly why Fils-Aime decided to decline West’s offer, given that everything the rapper touches seems to turn to gold.
Only One
Then again, the rapper is a lot like Google, in that he has an insane amount of stuff going on, but doesn’t always follow through. Look no further than a video game called Only One. West announced the project in 2015, and dedicated it to his late mother. In Only One, players would have been tasked to guide her into heaven. A trailer eventually released, but we’ve not heard anything about the game every since.