After E3 everyone is now well aware of Sony’s and Microsoft’s opinions on used games, however Nintendo have been pretty quiet about the situation, obviously their platform supports them but what does Nintendo of America boss Reggie Fils-Aime think about it?
Speaking with Polygon, Reggie gave a long and honest opinion on the matter, plus added some insight into what the publishers think as well:
“That impacts games that are annualized and candidly also impacts games that are maybe undifferentiated much more than [it] impacts Nintendo content,” he said.
“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.”
“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,” he said.
This is a very honest answer from Reggie and shows that if you respect the consumer and give them a good deal then they won’t trade in the game and will more likely buy the next game at full price because they know it is worth it. The whole system works on trust and if you respect the consumer they will become loyal.
Interestingly, Reggie mentioned that the publishers don’t mind the used game market, which is fantastic to hear considering people are worried that the publishers might enforce some sort of DRM on the PS4, this also brings hope that one they could make used games work in a very simple way on the Xbox One. This quote makes me even more confused as to why Microsoft enforced this on their new console, it seems nobody wanted it in the first place.
Let me know in the comments what you think about what Reggie said here, thanks.
