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(https://cornellsun.com/2022/09/29/reggie-fils-aime-83-former-president-and-coo-of-nintendo-advises-cornellians-as-distinguished-lecturer/)

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Michael Suguitan/Sun File Photo

Reggie Fils-Aimé '83, current Dyson School Leader in Residence, speaking about
leadership in Call Auditorium on Monday, Oct 21, 2019.

SEPTEMBER 29, 2022

FEATURED IN CATEGORY


REGGIE FILS-AIMÉ ’83 — FORMER PRESIDENT AND COO OF NINTENDO ADVISES CORNELLIANS
AS DISTINGUISHED LECTURER

BY SOFIA RUBINSON AND GABRIELLA PACITTO | SEPTEMBER 29, 2022

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This article is supplemented with a video interview, accessible here.

When Reggie Fils-Aimé ’83 was applying to be the head of marketing and sales at
Nintendo in 2003, he did something unusual. Although he was at this point an
experienced executive, he refused to take a job at Nintendo before having a
video conference with the global president to see if their visions for the
company aligned.

“I learned that my request really had created quite a stir within Nintendo.
Who’s this brash American asking to speak with our global president? He’s not
even an employee,” Fils-Aimé said. “But my mentality was that I needed to make
sure that I could partner with a global president. I needed to make sure that I
understood his vision and could support it. Because if I couldn’t do those
things, I was not going to be successful.”



Luckily for Fils-Aimé, the connection with the president was there. Fils-Aimé
would go on to become president and chief operating officer of Nintendo himself,
crediting his time at Cornell and his aggressive spirit for success. 

Passing those lessons on to the next generation, Fils-Aimé has written a book,
“Disrupting the Game: From the Bronx to the Top of Nintendo,” in which he writes
about overcoming obstacles, showing resilience and leadership under pressure.
The book is part of his participation in the Dean’s Distinguished Lecture Series
for the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management. Dean of the Dyson
School Jinhua Zhao selected the book to be read by incoming Dyson freshman and
sophomore transfer students and to serve as a thematic guide for those students’
education.

But Fils-Aimé wasn’t always an industry legend. He worked his way up, starting
off as a child of Haitian immigrants, born in the Bronx before moving to
Brentwood, New York where he attended middle and high school. 

LEADERBOARD 2



”It really did shape me as a first generation American,” Fils-Aimé said.
“Someone who, really early in life, was hearing all of these stories and things
about Haiti and all the challenges and strife… that shaped a mentality of focus
on education and a mentality to really envision being able to overcome
obstacles, having a sense of resilience and grit to drive my life forward.”

Fils-Aimé knew he wanted to go to college, but he was alone in navigating the
college admissions process and paying for his education. He was accepted to
Cornell with an ROTC scholarship for his first two years and then continued to
work on campus to fund his tuition.

While at Cornell, Fils-Aimé was president of his fraternity, Phi Sigma Kappa,
which served as both his social network and favorite pastime. He said he
remembers Cornell fondly for the lifelong friends he met while on campus.

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Fils-Aimé graduated in 1983 from the Dyson School with a job lined up at Procter
and Gamble, a multinational consumer goods corporation.

“[I] really made the pivot from a pure finance banking pathway to more general
management [at Procter and Gamble],” Fils-Aimé said. “From there, it was
continuing to hone my business skills running bigger and bigger businesses,
having greater responsibility for people and leading teams.”

After around six years at the company, Procter and Gamble was in decline,
according to Fils-Aimé. He authorized an overspending of the budget — the exact
thing he was told not to do when he first started. 

“I was aggressive. I was impatient. And we put in place these programs and the
programs worked,” Fils-Aimé said. “But because I had overspent my budget, my
career was over at Procter and Gamble.”

This experience taught Fils-Aimé more about himself and his need for a
fast-paced work environment. 

“I don’t have a lot of patience. I want to grow things. I want to drive things,”
Fils-Aimé said. 

After Procter and Gamble, Fils-Aimé started working in the restaurant industry,
first at Pizza Hut as the senior director of national marketing, then as senior
vice president of Panda Management Company and later the head of marketing for
Guinness. Then in 2003, Fils-Aimé switched industries again and joined Japanese
video game company Nintendo as their head of sales and marketing.

“It was a combination of experience and turning around businesses. An ability to
perform in high-paced visible businesses, a demonstrated ability to lead teams
and to really put in place plans that would overcome the business challenges,”
Fils-Aimé said. “Those were all the things that led me to join Nintendo.”

According to Fils-Aimé, when he joined Nintendo in 2003, the company was in a
difficult position. Sony’s PlayStation 2 was dominating the market, while
Nintendo’s GameCube was underperforming in comparison. It was around this time
that Microsoft also entered the video game industry.

“Nintendo needed to think through how it would differentiate itself, how they
would be able to compete against these other massive players, and find a way to
win on their terms,” Fils-Aimé said. “That was the situation that I walked
into.”

The first product Fils-Aimé worked on at Nintendo was the Nintendo DS, a
two-screen handheld device that, according to Fils-Aimé, was one of the first
products with a touchscreen on the market. Typically, Nintendo launches products
first in Japan and then expands to other international markets, such as the
market that Fils-Aimé had jurisdiction over — the United States, Canada and
Latin America. 

“I advocated that my marketplace needed to launch this device first in the
world, in order for us to create momentum and to be successful,” Fils-Aimé said.
“This market… is the largest contained video game opportunity market in the
world. And so having strong success here would lead us to have success in other
markets.”

Fils-Aimé also said he convinced the company to include a demo of a compatible
Nintendo DS game with the first few million units of hardware.

“Nintendo hates giving away content for free, I mean, it’s just not what they
believe in,” Fils-Aimé said. “But I was able to convince them that… this system
is so different that we need to give the player just a little taste of what it
could be and how it could perform in the market.”

In part due to the success of Nintendo DS, Fils-Aimé was promoted to president
of Nintendo over the course of two and a half years. 

After retiring from Nintendo in 2019, Fils-Aimé now spends his time holding
positions on various boards, including Brunswick Corporation and Spin Master. He
was also previously on the board for GameStop.

“It’s just a way for me to provide the benefits of my knowledge, perspective,
experience in a better way than being tied to one particular company,” Fils-Aimé
said. 

As a member of the Dyson School advisory board, Leader in Residence at Dyson
during the 2019-2020 academic year and participant in the Dean’s Distinguished
Lecture Series, Fils-Aimé returns to the Cornell campus frequently. Part of the
joy of this work is the ability to help Cornellians like himself.  

“It is overwhelming to see my story, my journey, being used to help the current
Cornell student population,” Fils-Aimé said.

After such a diverse career, Fils-Aimé advises students to be open to new
opportunities, be open minded and have as many experiences as possible during
their college years.

“Be a little bit more open and consider a range of possibilities. You don’t have
to have your complete life set as a 21, 22 year-old,” Fils-Aimé said. “Think
about the range of different options you can do, learn and think about the
different things you can do. Now is the opportunity to do that.”

Correction, Sept. 29, 1:55 p.m.: A previous version of this story implied that
Reggie Fils-Aimé was currently on the board for GameStop. He is no longer on the
board. The story also implied that he was currently the Dyson School Leader in
Residence, but that was during the 2019-2022 academic year. These errors have
been clarified.






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ABOUT SOFIA RUBINSON



Sofia Rubinson is a member of the Class of 2024 in the College of Arts and
Sciences. She is a News Editor on the 140th editorial board and can be reached
at srubinson@cornellsun.com.

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ABOUT GABRIELLA PACITTO

Gabriella Pacitto is an assistant sports editor on the 140th editorial board.
She is a member of the Class of 2024 in the Industrial and Labor Relations
School. You can reach her at gpacitto@cornellsun.com.

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   If games can just predict player input and operate on their own, are they
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