Former President at Nintendo of America Reggie Fils-Aime recently revealed what led to his departure from the board of directors at GameStop. The reason seems to have been that he was cut out of conversations concerning corporate strategy. The company has been on shaky ground for nearly a decade.

The news comes from an interview conducted by Bloomberg during the South by Southwest festival in which Fils-Aime talks about his time at GameStop. Following his departure from Nintendo, the executive joined the board of directors at GameStop in the belief that he could turn things around for the failing company. Fils-Aime left about a year later.

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Fils-Aime said that he believed GameStop could be successful if only its management adopted the right strategy. "I believed that the company could be successful. I believed that with taking the right action that certainly the company would exist in time for the launch of the new systems,” he said in reference to current generation consoles. “And a company that services the core gaming audience the way they do would be able to have a successful future.” But management shut him out instead.

The executive pointed out that GameStop needed to find better ways of serving its customers. Management at the company however refused to listen to his advice. "The issue was that as the strategy was beginning to be developed, I asked to be part of the team to develop the strategy,” Fils-Aime explained. “I knew the business. I knew it as a consumer. I knew it as a vendor. I had pretty strong opinions on how the business needed to be pivoted. But I was rebuffed.”

Fils-Aime explained that GameStop doesn’t “know this business” or “understand the players." When his attempts at articulating a corporate strategy were rebuffed, Fils-Aime saw the writing on the wall and decided to leave the company. "I took that as code for 'thank you, but we really don't want any other ideas.' For me, that was not acceptable," he remarked.

GameStop

Nothing seems to have changed since Fils-Aime left the board of directors at GameStop. "There has not been an articulated strategy,” the executive noted. “Leadership says ‘well, we don't want to articulate our strategy because we don't want anyone to steal our strategy.” Fils-Aime considers this to be a critical failure. He said that management needs to get its business partners, distributors, workers, and shareholders on board with its vision for the future, but the company seems to be going forward without any real direction. How things will turn out for GameStop remains to be seen.

Fils-Aime also gave his thoughts on other companies during the interview. In addition to GameStop, the executive slammed Meta, doubting that its "current definition" of the metaverse will be successful. He noted that Meta is "not itself an innovative company," saying “they’ve either acquired interesting things like Oculus and Instagram or they've been a fast follower of people's ideas.”

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