Nintendo Exploring New Pricing Models, Incentives

This comes from the investors meetings slideshows, translated in English. See here.

The way in which dedicated video game systems and their software are sold has not changed significantly since the business model of dedicated video game platforms was first established 30 years ago. 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. The decision to change it is the manifestation of our recognition that we cannot expect this model to work forever amid dynamic changes in people’s lifestyles.

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. Based on our account system, if we can offer flexible price points to consumers who meet certain conditions, we can create a situation where these consumers can enjoy our software at cheaper price points when they purchase more. Here, we do not need to limit the condition to the number of software titles they purchase. Inviting friends to start playing a particular software title is also an example of a possible condition. 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. When we see our overall consumers, they generally play two or three titles per year. We aim to establish a new sales mechanism that will be beneficial to both consumers and software creators by encouraging our consumers to play more titles and increasing a platform’s active use ratio without largely increasing our consumers’ expenditures.

If Nintendo can pull this with success, it'll be a really good step forward for the industry. I've always been someone who buys a lot of games per year, but for the past 3-4 years I've been waiting on so many titles since they drop in price relatively quickly. If they decided to run with this kind of promotion, it'd definitely prompt me to buy more games when they release, as well as making it far easier for me to recommend a game to someone who doesn't play as often as I do. So many of my co-workers own a 3DS and a Wii U but choose to wait a bit before buying games at full price and they're always looking for deals.

That plus with the social integration of Miiverse and getting your friends to participate with you on those deals could be a big success for Nintendo.

Sounds pretty awesome if ya ask me.

sounds great.

Sounds like wishful thinking more than anything else.

1. They don't have the infrastructure to make this work. You can't even sign on to another person's Wii U as yourself and they're talking about friend recommendations?

2. Big stores are already ahead of this. Best Buy's Gamers Club Unlocked gets you 20% off every single game no matter what, plus sales and markdowns. I can't see Nintendo being able to compete with pricing like that.

If this is from the eShop then the majority of the world is screwed where ISP's have data limits.

1. "On Wii U, we launched Nintendo Network IDs, which are abbreviated as NNIDs. This is the first step of our efforts to transform customer relationship management from device-based to account-based"

Link

2. It's better than not trying at all. That's the point of competition, to get companies involved in these kinds of schemes.

Nintendo are moving slowly, but after the recent press release, they're showing signs of urgency. They have a new model to announce mid-this year and to roll out during 2014/2015.

Awesome if they can pull it off, but there is next to nothing that gives me faith that they can unfortunately. Would like to be proven wrong.

The problem with the gamer's club is that you have to spend an outlandish amount of money to become a part of it, and most people don't buy enough games to make it worthwhile.

That would be pretty nice if implemented!

Too bad it is a program that, like Club Nintendo, most likely won't come to these parts.