He was also responsible for making Wii Sports free, and he had to convince the Japanese company…

We’ve covered the pricing of the Nintendo Switch 2 and its games on several occasions. The Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour is also part of this topic. It’s essentially an interactive guide that won’t be free, but will cost $10. By comparison, Astro’s Playroom was pre-installed on the PlayStation 5 and did a good job of showing off what the PS5 has to offer, so it was a fair tech demo with some well-designed maps. Compared to what the big N has put together, it doesn’t seem that polished…

The former head of Nintendo’s US subsidiary, Reggie Fils-Aimé, seems to have been referring to a point in his time at Nintendo when he commented on why they were asking gamers to spend $10 on the title. Reggie shared some seemingly on-target excerpts from an interview he gave to IGN back in 2022 when he released his book (titled Disrupting the Game: From the Bronx to the Top of Nintendo). He shared three excerpts from the nearly 50-minute interview, focusing on how he had to fight for Wii Sports to be a free-to-play bundle game at launch during the development of the Nintendo Wii.

The story of Wii Sports pack in …https://t.co/LhflSFWaL3

— Reggie Fils-Aimé (@Reggie) April 9, 2025

When he first suggested to Nintendo legend Shigeru Miyamoto that Wii Sports should be a free-to-play game, he pushed back! “It’s an understatement to say that Miyamoto pushed back. When I first made the suggestion, he literally said, ‘Reggie, Nintendo does not give away software for free. You don’t understand how hard our developers work to create compelling content like this,'” Fils-Aimé said.

He knew that wasn’t true because he remembered getting free software with his SNES as a kid. He went on to argue why he thought Wii Sports should be part of the package alongside the console, and after its success, he made the same suggestion about Wii Play, which again angered Miyamoto. Even after the success of Wii Sports, he was still very much against giving away free software with the hardware.

So is the Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour paid for because Reggie no longer works there? If he just shared the interview, it can’t be a coincidence…

Source: WCCFTech