On the Talking Games with Reggie & Harold podcast, Former President of Nintendo of America Reggie Fils-Aime talked about his brief meeting with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian-West. Apparently, Kanye stopped by the Nintendo booth at E3 many years ago, spent time with the legendary Shigeru Miyamoto, and asked to meet with Reggie. The two visionaries sat down with each other in Kanye West’s fashion office in Calabasas, California where the famed rapper-producer would ultimately voice his interest in partnering with Nintendo to create a new video game.
Reggie recalled that the meeting was “interesting” and felt that “Kanye [had] such a passion for the video game space.” Despite this praise, Reggie politely declined Kanye’s pitch. “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.” Reggie remembered telling West that Nintendo would be incredibly difficult to work with because of its commitment to high quality content and West replied enthusiastically stating, “Reggie, you’re exactly the type of partner I want because of that reason!”
“Part of it was talking about what he was up to,” Reggie recounted. “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.'” Reggie didn’t go into too much detail on what the prospective project was about, but Kanye West is no stranger to the games industry. In 2015, West revealed Only One, a game dedicated to his late mother Donda where players would be tasked with guiding Donda to heaven. Even though a trailer (below) was eventually released for the game, there has been no further news surrounding the development of Only One.
[Source: Nintendo Everything via IGN]