Nintendo Had to 'Politely Decline' an Offer to Work With Kanye West on a Game

Former President of Nintendo of America Reggie Fils-Aime has revealed that he had to "politely decline" an offer to work with Kanye West on a video game concept due to the amount of other projects that were currently in development at the company. As reported by Nintendo Everything, Reggie shared the story on his Talking Games with Reggie & Harold podcast, which is raising money for the New York Videogame Critics Circle nonprofit's mentoring work, and he stated that the meeting happened at an E3 "many years ago." Kanye visited the Nintendo Booth during that E3 and was even able to spend a bit of time with Shigeru Miyamoto. He then requested a meeting with Reggie, and the two ended up meeting up at one of Kanye's offices in Calabasas, California. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2019/02/21/remembering-reggies-best-ass-moments"] “Part of it was talking about what he was up to," Reggie explained. "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. 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.’ 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.'” Reggie said that not only was the meeting "interesting," Kim Kardashian-West was also there. While the project never saw the light of day, Reggie and Nintendo both felt that "Kanye has such a passion for the video game space, and he's a creator." [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2015/02/23/kanye-west-is-making-a-video-game-ign-news"] Kanye's history with games extends beyond this one meeting, as he revealed he was working on a game titled Only One that would have players guiding his mother Donda "to the highest gates of heaven by holding her to the light." While he announced the project in 2015, little news about it has surfaced since then. Image Credit: Rob Kim/Getty Images. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com. Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.