New Super Mario Bros 2 and Wii U games to be sold at retail and download
At an investors briefing meeting this morning, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata has announced that New Super Mario Bros 2 will be the first Nintendo game to be sold not only at retail but also through digital download through the eShop. The game will be downloaded to the Nintendo 3DS systems SD card. Looks like you might need to buy a bigger one!
New Super Mario Bros. 2 and other digital download games will also be able to be purchased digitally at retail. You’ll be able to pay for the game and download them at stores. Whether or not that will happen outside of Japan at this stage isn’t announced. The logistics of this wouldn’t be cheap.
Satoru Iwata also told investors that game shelf life is getting shorter and with games available digitally it’ll help Nintendo by not having tons of inventory sitting around if something doesn’t sell that well.
As for pricing Iwata has said he doesn’t think there will be a big price difference between retail and digital. This is due to two things, firstly that the retailer can sell the game digitally and that retailers will set the price.
The investor briefing is still on going and we will update this story with any more news.
I don’t know about you but I would soooo double dip on some games (as long as it used the same save, unlikely). Mario Kart 7 with my at all times? Sure why not.
Actually, I won’t use this feature for Mario Kart 7.
I mean, I already have it on Cartridge, and I’ve always got the game with me, anyway.
The point is that you won’t need to carry lots of cartridges and keep swapping them around. If Mario Kart 7 is the only game you play and the only game you will ever play, then fine. But if you like to have multiple games, then cartridges are a massive hassle – not to mention you can loose/break them.
If it’s a lot cheaper.
I can see this causing some major storage issues on 3DS. Hopefully it’ll mean that Wii U ships with a decent sized HD, ot at least allows external drives to be used.
As for digital purchases from retail, couldn’t they just hand over a download code ala 3D Classics: Kid Icarus?
I guess that’s a smart move.
I’m gonna miss buying games in boxes when that stops though 🙁
I’m not sure what to think about this. On one hand, having a game on the Home menu at all times would be awesome, but I like to have the boxes and manuals for games. And if they’re not going to be cheaper on the eShop then I would rather buy the physical copy or buy a download code at a store which will hopefully be a bit competitive with pricing. The storage is in an issue too, and while I have a 32GB SD card for my 3DS I imagine it would get clogged up pretty quick. Also it has been giving me issues with corrupt files recently and I don’t really want to download a $70 3DS game to have it corrupt on me. The idea on Wii U seems better though as external hard drives can be used and my 1TB HDD should be perfectly fine. Knowing me I will probably end up buying both copies just to be happy both ways. 😛
I just don’t see why Nintendo can’t add a 500GB hard drive to WiiU. Seriously it won’t add that much to the price- it’s 2012 and they really need to give people that option. They might have to go against everything they’ve ever done and add a second SKU with a 500GB hard drive. But the machine simply has to have a hard drive, and a large one- especially if we are going to see all games available as digital and on disc. As for 3DS- I have a case that carries 3 cartridges- so with one in the machine I don’t ever really see myself being in a situation where I need more than 4 games at my disposal, so the issue of storage won’t matter to me.