Reggie Fils-Aimé Talks Re-Evaluating His Life After Iwata’s Death

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Reggie Fils-Aimé – the famed ex-President of Nintendo of America – is currently working to promote his upcoming book, Disrupting the Game: From the Bronx to the Top of Nintendo. Last month, Reggie took to the stage at South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas to discuss his upbringing, his time at Nintendo, and the impact Satoru Iwata’s death had on him.

You can now check out the full interview in the video above, but we thought we’d share one of the more interesting tidbits regarding Iwata’s death. Reggie shared some background on how the passing of Nintendo’s CEO affected his decision to ultimately leave the company:

So my boss, my mentor, my friend, Satoru Iwata passed away in 2015. He and I were just about the same age and he passed away from a form of cancer, and you know, he and I had worked together at that point for over ten years. So when that happens, when that touches so close to the bone, it really creates a need for you to step and evaluate – “what am I doing, am I having fun, am I doing things that are really fulfilling” – and I was having a lot of fun at Nintendo, but I wanted to do more.

I wanted to share my learnings on a much broader stage – like this – I wanted to help young executives go on their own pathway, I wanted to do board service, I wanted to spend more time with Cornell (University). When you’re running a company – Nintendo of America was the biggest part of global Nintendo, half of the sales and profits – when you’re running the company, you can’t do all of those things.

Reggie went on to clarify that he needed the company to be on a positive path ahead of his departure, along with ensuring that great people were in place to steer the company forward.

It’s well worth checking out the full interview when you can; Reggie’s views on Meta (which we’ve covered before) are damning, but he’s full of optimism for smaller companies that he believes will drive innovation for the industry going forwards.

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Let us know in the comments below what you make of Reggie’s interview at SXSW.