Reggie Fils-Aimé, former president and COO of Nintendo of America, has revealed details of Kanye West's desire for a collab with the gaming giant.
Fils-Aimé discussed a meeting he had with West and wife Kim Kardashian following an E3 show several years ago. As Fils-Aimé explained, the possibility of the Nintendo team pulling off a Kanye project "just wasn't there" at the time.
"Part of it was talking about what he was up to," he said on a recent episode of the Talking Games With Reggie and Harold podcast, per Nintendo Life. "He was experimenting with a piece of video game content. 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."
When Fils-Aimé explained to West that Nintendo his take on why the rbrand wouldn't be the right partner for this project, West responded with even more enthusiasm.
"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,'" Fils-Aimé said. "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.'"
For the full interview, click here.
Back in 2016, West unveiled a trailer for Only One, a mobile game inspired by the death of his mother Donda and the Paul McCartney-featuring 2014 single of the same name. As of late 2019, at least according to a report from The Gamer, film and animation studio Encyclopedia Pictura is "no longer involved" with the project.
