Nintendo exploring flexible price points for games

Today’s investor briefing has featured a bunch of interesting ideas and news from Nintendo.

However, while everyone is concentrating on smartphones and unified accounts there was one little idea about pricing that sounds great.

Nintendo is planning to introduce a new sales idea that will reward people (potentially) for buying more games, sharing them with friends or buying them with friends.

Iwata told investors that for years the video game industry has stuck with one pricing model. “Dedicated video game systems are sold for two hundred or three hundred dollars, on which standalone software titles are distributed for 30 or 50 dollars. This simple model received widespread support from consumers that enabled us to create today’s market.”

However Satoru Iwata believes that this model will not work forever, people’s lifestyles have dramatically changed over the years and some new thinking is required.

“If we succeed in the redefinition of video game platforms that I speak of today, our account-based connections with consumers will become very clear. For example, until now it has been taken for granted that software is offered to users at the same price regardless of how many titles they purchase in a year, be it one, five or even ten titles.”

Nintendo believes if it can track better what and how much we’re buying it can offer us better pricing. Inviting a friend may also be something Nintendo looks into. “If we can achieve such a sales mechanism, we can expect to increase the number of players per title, and the players will play our games with more friends. This can help maintain the high usage ratio of a platform. When one platform maintains a high active use ratio, the software titles which run on it have a higher potential to be noticed by many, which leads to more people playing with more titles”.

Satoru Iwata says it will work on this brand-new sales mechanism in the medium term, but wants to experiment with it on the Wii U ‘at an early stage’.

Perhaps we’ll see something like the Nintendo Premium Program expanded? This sounds like a great idea to us and rewards those who buy a lot and often, which is pretty much everyone. Win-win.