Reggie on used games, disc releases not going anywhere
Speaking with Polygon, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime acknowledged the importance of supporting used games. At the same time, Fils-Aime believes that creating a product with high replayability can dissuade consumers from trading in their titles.
“We have been very clear, we understand that used games are a way for some consumers to monetize their games. They will buy a game, play it, bring it back to their retailer to get credit for their next purchase. Certainly, that impacts games that are annualized and candidly also impacts games that are maybe undifferentiated much more than [it] impacts Nintendo content. Why is that? Because the replayability of our content is super strong. The consumer wants to keep playing Mario Kart. The consumer want to keep playing New Super Mario Bros. They want to keep playing Pikmin. So we see that the trade-in frequency on Nintendo content is much less than the industry average – much, much less. So for us, we have been able to step back and say that we are not taking any technological means to impact trade-in and we are confident that if we build great content, then the consumer will not want to trade in our games.”
Microsoft will be implementing a tough used games policy that will make it difficult for consumers to trade in their content. Polygon asked Reggie if Nintendo is committed to stick to its open used games policy even if publishers ask them to implement more restrictions. He said:
“The fact of the matter is, we will see what happens with publishers, but it seems to me that every major publisher has come and said we don’t mind used games.”
Reggie went on to tackle another slightly different but related topic: physical titles. They’re not going anywhere, in his view.
“I don’t see [Nintendo stopping the sale of game discs] in the future, certainly not the near-term future. For us, retail is a key part of our overall business. Retailers play a huge role in driving awareness. Their stores play a large role in consumers having an experience with their interactives. We couldn’t do a program like what we are doing with Best Buy without the power of retail and letting consumers play four games that haven’t been released yet. The only place you can see these games is either here at E3 or at a 100 best buy locations in the U.S. and in Canada. So we see a very strong role for physical product in the near-term.”
Reggie closed out the used games discussion with the following:
“I think we’ll have to wait and see. I am not sure what the next steps will be, how the different competitors will respond to each other. Again, for us, it is about the games. We want to give the consumers a great gameplay experience.”
