Reggie says NES and SNES Classics helped sustain Nintendo during Wii U slump

Former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé has said the NES Classic and SNES Classic were created partly to help sustain Nintendo’s business during the Wii U’s dark days. That is a revealing bit of history because those mini systems are often remembered as cute nostalgia boxes, not as emergency business tools.

But the timing makes sense. Wii U sales were struggling, Switch was not yet ready, and Nintendo still needed something to keep retail presence and holiday volume alive. The NES Classic and SNES Classic did that beautifully, turning nostalgia into a compact hardware rush that people actually fought to buy.

It also proved something important about Nintendo’s back catalog: old games are not just museum pieces. Packaged correctly, they can become mass-market products again. In hindsight, the Classics were not just stopgaps. They were a reminder that Nintendo’s past could help stabilize its future.

Source: Nintendo Everything - https://nintendoeverything.com/former-nintendo-exec-confirms-nes-and-snes-classics-were-made-to-sustain-the-companys-business/