Longtime Nintendo fans may recall there have been several periods of time where Nintendo would mysteriously stop selling its products directly on retail giant Amazon, without any official explanation as to why.

Now, former President of Nintendo of America Reggie Fils-Aimé has revealed one of the reasons Nintendo pulled its products in the past. Speaking at New York University, Reggie revealed that Amazon once tried to coerce Nintendo into giving them financial support in order to secure the lowest possible prices for games on the market, an illegal pricing tactic that he and Nintendo wanted no part in.

“Amazon was looking to get bigger into the video game space. Amazon’s mentality back then is they wanted to have the lowest price out in the marketplace, even lower than Walmart… Essentially what Amazon wanted (was an) obscene amount of support, financial support, so they could have the lowest price and beat Walmart. I literally said to the executive, “You know that’s illegal, right? I can’t do that.”

Literally we stopped selling to Amazon and it’s because I wasn’t going to do something illegal. I wasn’t going to do something that would put at risk the relationship we have with other retailers. But it also set the stage to say, look, you’re not going to push me around. This is the way we do business. And so that’s how over time you build respect.”

Taking Reggie’s words at face value, it seems possible that Nintendo’s relationship with Amazon never fully recovered from this spat, and any further instances of Nintendo pulling out of the platform could be the result of similar disagreements.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.