Written by: Daniel Kaszor



Has Nintendo Co. Ltd. finally seen the light at the end of the digital tunnel?

Notorious for largely ignoring digital distribution — selling games over the Internet, which are then distributed digitally, rather than via a physical disc — new evidence suggests Nintendo may finally be treating the online sales channel with a little bit of respect.

Late in 2011, I was sent preview code for Pushmo, a fun little puzzle game offered exclusively on Nintendo’s 3DS e-shop. This was followed a few weeks later by preview codes for a few other e-shop games. For those who review games on a regular basis, this is not an uncommon practice among publishers.

But Nintendo’s decision to send out preview codes rather than physical software is notable for a few reasons.

First: Nintendo has had digital offerings since the launch of the Wii in 2006, but it has been very difficult to find out information about what would pop up. Nintendo was notorious for announcing games on it’s Wii virtual console — which offered games for older systems such as the Super Nintendo on the Wii — just a few days before they were put online.

Nintendo started offering original content to download through its WiiWare and DSiWare channels, but it was almost impossible to figure out what was coming out when. The fact that Nintendo has made noise about Pushmo and other games on the 3DS e-shop signals the company may have changed course and that it has decided to start promoting what’s hitting the e-shop.

Second: This is actually a fairly complex technical change for Nintendo. Until a recent update, it wasn’t possible for reviewers to be sent preview codes to download games on the e-shop. If a company wanted to sell their game, they had to send a reviewer a certain amount of Nintendo points (shop currency) and then have them purchase the game. This was a strained relationship on both sides of the equation, from the reviewer who was basically taking cash from a PR person, to the PR person who basically had to trust the reviewer to actually purchase the game in question.

The update allows Nintendo or third parties to send out more directed trials for reviewers, and for reviewers to have easier access to them.

Both of these things may seem like a bit of insider baseball, but they represent a fundamental shift in attitude from Nintendo in how the content on the company’s digital distribution channels is perceived.

In the past, the problem wasn’t that Nintendo didn’t have a large amount of content on its digital channels, it actually had quite few things in its Wii Shop, but that the content itself was seemingly treated as more of a long-tail way to earn a few extra dollars and not a service that needed to be pushed to the forefront.

This is important, because in the five-and-a-half years since the Wii came out in 2006, there has been a digital distribution channel, the App Store, that’s gone on to shatter sales expectations and redefine one of Nintendo’s core markets.

Apple has done this by making the App Store front-and-centre with its iOS devices. And while Nintendo doesn’t give the e-shop quite that amount of prominence yet, these moves show that the company certainly seems aware that it’s important to do so.

Source

All I have to say is THEY BETTER!!!!!!

your thoughts?