In a crossover event that no one expected, music artist Kanye West met with key figures within Nintendo to discuss the possibility of making a video game. This information was revealed by the former Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime during a podcast called "Talking Games With Reggie & Harold." The podcast aims to raise donations for the nonprofit New York Videogame Critics Circle's mentoring work.
During the podcast, Fils-Aime explained that Kanye West approached him and Shigeru Miyamoto at its E3 booth a few years ago with an idea to pitch. West was so adamant and passionate about his idea that it actually led to a formal meeting with the company shortly after.
Kanye West explained that he experimented with a piece of video game content and wanted reactions to it. West believed that Nintendo was the right company to work with. However, Nintendo had a lot of different projects in the works at the same time, so a collaboration with Kanye West was not viable.
Fils-Aime said he had to deliver the bad news to both West and Kim Kardashian, who was also in attendance at the meeting. Reggie tried to explain to West that Nintendo is a strict company, and that he probably would not want to work with them anyway. Apparently, hearing that from Reggie inspired West more, as he said that Nintendo's work ethic is exactly the type of partner he would want to work with on this project.
From the end of the meeting, Reggie thought it was interesting and admired West's passion for not only content creation, but the video game industry. Reggie never said what the idea for the video game was, or if the company had made contact with West since that meeting. There is always the possibility that West was still interested in making his game, but with another company. If anything, West can collaborate with another company like Ariana Grande did with Square Enix and Brave Exivus.
It seems West was not interested in making his game unless he knew the right company was going to back it up, which happened to be Nintendo at the time. West has reported working on a Donda West video game set to showcase her journey to heaven, so that could be what the meeting was about. Either way, hopefully West left the discussion with Nintendo satisfied so he could find some other way to share his idea with the world.