Transition From Switch Will Be 'Significant Challenge,' Ex-Nintendo Head Says

A few months before everything shut down in March 2020, one of the last VIPs I saw in person was former Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aimé. We shook hands at the New York Game Awards, an award show put on by a charity organization that helps students in The Bronx learn about game design. Fils-Aimé, better known as Reggie to his fans, is a Bronx native and on the charity's board of directors. 

Disrupting The Game, his new book released in May, covers his years at Nintendo as well as his path from the Bronx to a life in business and marketing. I've connected with Fils-Aimé many times  throughout his time at Nintendo and spoke to him again recently about the book, Nintendo's past and the future of gaming.

In my form of retirement, it really is finding ways to share the benefits of my experiences, my personal learnings and journey, and to share it with as many people as possible. That has brought me to the Bronx physically, it's brought me to do a number of video- based events, with the variety of different folks that the New York Video Game Critic Circle mentors. In fact, I have another session in a couple of weeks, with our good mutual friend, Harold Goldberg. So that's been a key part of how I have given back. I've also made a number of trips to Cornell University where I went to school, I was actually just up there a few weeks ago. 

On the positive side, the lockdowns enabled me to write this book in a pretty expeditious fashion -- from start to finish, it was about 18 months. Because I wasn't traveling, I was able to write and edit just about every day. Like everyone else, it's created new opportunities for me to engage with folks through screen. 

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