Reggie Fils-Aimé

Reginald Fils-Aimé (

Fils-Aimé retired as president of Nintendo of America on April 15, 2019, after an announcement on February 21, and was succeeded by Doug Bowser. He subsequently became a Leader in Residence at Cornell University and later named to the board of directors for Brunswick Corporation, GameStop, and Spin Master.

Reginald Fils-Aimé was born on March 25, 1961, in The Bronx, New York City.^[1] His parents had immigrated to the United States from Haiti in the 1950s due to conflicting political views of his grandparents; his paternal grandfather was a general when the Haitian military overthrew the democratically elected government, which included his maternal grandfather.^[3] Fils-Aimé's mother worked as a lead sales representative in a fine jewelry store and his father was a machinist. Fils-Aimé has said that he adopted his optimistic attitude from his mother. He was raised on Long Island,^[1] where he attended Brentwood High School;^[4] he described himself as the "lone minority" among his classmates.^[5] He was accepted into

Fils-Aimé took a job at Procter & Gamble in the company's brand management program.^[5] He also took a position as senior director of national marketing at Pizza Hut, where he launched the Bigfoot Pizza and the Big New Yorker.^[7]

Fils-Aimé served as the Head of Marketing for

He then joined the American Chinese food company Panda Management Co. acting as senior vice-president.^[7] He also joined MTV's VH1 network in 2001 as senior vice-president and left in 2003.^[5][7] Fils-Aimé was responsible for a 30% increase in ratings for the VH1 network by shifting the channel's focus to appeal to younger viewers.^[7] As part of his role at VH1, Fils-Aimé also laid out and implemented a marketing strategy for The Concert for New York City, which garnered more than $35 million for disaster relief following the September 11 attacks.^[7]

Fils-Aimé joined Nintendo in December 2003 as the executive vice president of sales and marketing.^[9][10] Fils-Aimé had been recruited for the position, but during the interview period, he said that he had asked to see Satoru Iwata, the president of Nintendo, which was considered highly unusual but was granted. His conversation with Iwata went far longer than planned and it helped to establish the friendly relationship Fils-Aimé had with Iwata for more than a decade which, according to Fils-Aimé, helped with open communications and understanding to help Nintendo improve overall as a business. Because of this, Fils-Aimé has called Iwata his mentor as well as a "dear friend" throughout his time at Nintendo.^[11]

Fils-Aimé was initially responsible for all sales and marketing activities for Nintendo in the United States, Canada, and Latin America.^[7] On May 25, 2006, Fils-Aimé became the president and chief operating officer of Nintendo of America after former president, Tatsumi Kimishima, was moved to his new role as chairman of the board and chief executive officer.^[9] Fils-Aimé was the first American to hold this position.

At the time Fils-Aimé was hired in 2003, the video game industry was stagnant in major markets, and Nintendo's competitors

Following the conference, many images of him spread across the Web. In interviews years after the 2004 event, Fils-Aimé said that his presentation was not his idea, but writing from the public relations department, and he himself had to be convinced to give the aggressive approach.^[1] Fils-Aimé's presentation was considered by others the right attitude that Nintendo needed to present at the time to show themselves still relevant in the current console generation and was no longer taking a conservative approach to gaming.^[12]

Fils-Aimé is considered to be responsible for revamping Nintendo's public relations in North America, leading many fans and members of the press to dub his arrival the "Reggielution" (after "Revolution", the code name for the Wii).^[15] He had not only considered the constantly-changing challenges of marketing to youth, but as well as continuing to address the older video game players, who were still a key market for Nintendo. He further believed that addressing all demographics would be like a rising tide for the industry with Nintendo positioned to capture that the best.^[1] While still in sales, Fils-Aimé rewrote how Nintendo worked with vendors; instead of having Nintendo try to seek vendors' favor and better in-store place by assuring Nintendo could meet demand, Fils-Aimé created agreements where vendors would only get Nintendo's stock in stores if vendors ordered high volumes of their product. This served to help with the success and popularity of the Nintendo DS.^[1] He has attributed the success of the Wii to a marketing strategy laid out by Clayton Christensen:

First, how do you satisfy

the core while still expanding appeal? And second, how do you leverage your strengths against entirely untapped audiences--to the so-called "blue oceans" in popular marketing speak? ... Provide a new product that actually underperforms on an established industry metric for "progress," and substitute an alternative that typically is smaller, less expensive and easier to use. Initially, the "core" of any industry will scoff. But if the product is right, enough new users will be attracted to form an alternative definition for progress.^[16]

On July 11, 2007, while introducing the Wii Balance Board, Fils-Aimé walked up onto the stage and stated “My body is ready.” This quotation would eventually become a meme^[17] and Fils-Aimé acknowledged the phrase several times, including at the E3 2012 conference,^[18] his appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon^[19] and his resignation announcement video.^[20] When Iwata implemented their Nintendo Direct online press conferences, Fils-Aimé would frequently participate in these alongside Iwata, including a mock Mii-avatar battle, which similarly became the subject of several memes.^[21] In other public press presentations for Nintendo, Fils-Aimé has been involved with skits with production support from Stoopid Buddy Stoodios, Mega64, and The Jim Henson Company.^[22][23]

On November 5, 2007, at the encouragement of marketing professor Ed McLaughlin in the department of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University, Fils-Aimé gave a guest lecture on Nintendo's marketing strategy targeted at gamers across a spectrum of demographics.^{[citation needed]} Fils-Aimé was a member of the advisory council for Cornell's Communication department from 2008 to 2021.^[24]

In 2016 and early 2017, Fils-Aimé was featured in two episodes of Deadlock, on the

Fils-Aimé announced his resignation as the company's president and COO on February 21, 2019, which took effect on April 15, 2019. He was replaced by the company's then-head of sales, Doug Bowser.^[26][27] Fils-Aimé stated he started thinking about retirement after Iwata's death in 2015: "It also reinforced for me the legacy that he had built, and he had created for the company. And that really drove me to be introspective around, 'So what's the legacy that I want to build, that I want to leave?'" He waited until he felt Nintendo of America was on solid footing for positive growth, which occurred by early 2019, to begin the process of retiring.^[28] His decision to retire was emboldened by the success of the Nintendo Switch, a hybrid game console the company released in 2017 which by the end of 2018 had already reached over 32 million sales. He believed with the Switch, which he had compared to Nintendo's previously successful Wii and Nintendo DS consoles, "the company was going to be in great shape for at least a few years".^[29]

After leaving Nintendo, Fils-Aimé created his own Twitter account under the name @Reggie and made his first tweet saying, "Hi Twitter community."^[30]

Fils-Aimé announced he had been brought on as the first Leader in Residence at Cornell University's

Fils-Aimé, who had participated in The Game Awards since its creation in 2015, presented at The Game Awards 2019.^[33] GameStop named Fils-Aimé along two others onto its board of directors in March 2020, replacing several directors that were leaving as part of the company's efforts to turn the company's profitability around.^[34] He and several of GameStop's board members were slated to resign around June 2021 based on SEC filings.^[35] He was also named to Spin Master's board of directors in May 2020.^[36]

After the COVID-19 pandemic began, Fils-Aimé announced that he and video games journalist Harold Goldberg would start a podcast, Talking Games with Reggie and Harold, in conjunction with the New York Video Game Critics Circle. The podcast is aimed to raise charitable funds for the non-profit group to help mentor lower-income and under-served students in New York City impacted by the pandemic.^[37] Fils-Aimé was added to the board of directors at Brunswick Corporation on October 27, 2020,^[38] and later authored a book titled Disrupting the Game: From the Bronx to the Top of Nintendo released in April 2022.

Fils-Aimé has been recognized for his marketing expertise in the advertising industry, including receiving a

Fils-Aimé is married to Stacey Sanner, his longtime girlfriend whom he met in his previous position at VH1. He has three children from a previous marriage.^[1][39] Fils-Aimé started playing video games with his children when they were 2 and 5 years old.^[7] As of 2006^[update] he lived on the Eastside of Seattle.^[1]

• Fils-Aimé, Reggie (2022). Disrupting the Game: From the Bronx to the Top of Nintendo. HarperCollins Leadership.
  ISBN 9781400226672
  .

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Reggie Fils-Aimé.

Wikiquote has quotations related to Reggie Fils-Aimé.

• Reggie Fils-Aimé at
  IMDb
• Reggie Who?
• Surfing The Blue Ocean: Fils-Aimé On Nintendo's Expanding Market
• The Nintendo Reggie-Lution, IGN (May 13, 2004)
• GameCube Advanced outdated biography^{[permanent dead link‍]}
• San Jose Mercury News GDC 2007 Interview
• N'Gai Croal's Level Up GDC 2007 Interview Part 1^{[dead link‍]}
• N'Gai Croal's Level Up GDC 2007 Interview Part 2
• MTV E3 2007 Interview
• GamePro E3 2007 Interview

Business positions
Preceded by Tatsumi Kimishima	President of Nintendo of America 2006 – 2019	Succeeded by Doug Bowser