Nintendo: Worried About Used Games? Make Better Games

Nintendo's Reggie Fils-Amie has informed Polygon that the company has a very simple policy towards used games – if you don't want people selling their games, make better games. 

Fils-Amie pointed to the fact that Nintendo has the lowest software trade-in rate of any platform holder meaning pre-owned Nintendo titles tend to retain their value for longer than pre-owned games on other platforms.

"We have been very clear, we understand that used games are a way for some consumers to monetise their games," the executive commented. "They buy a game, play it, bring it back to their retailer to get credit for their next purchase. Certainly, that impacts games that are annualised 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, New Super Mario Bros, Pikmin. So we see that the trade-in frequency of 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," he concluded.

Fils-Amie also believes that the overwhelmingly positive response to the PlayStation 4's used game policies announced at Sony's pre-E3 press conference had less to do with Sony's stance so much as it was a reaction to Microsoft's restriction on used games and game sharing. 

While publishers can block the online components of PS4 games – as they can on PS3 – they can't actively prevent users from giving away or selling their games. EA has said they never called on any of the platform holders to block used games and from what has been said by the company in recent days it seems they will not avail of any blocks on any content – single player or multiplayer – for used games. 

Fils-Amie does not believe publishers will attempt to limit used games saying "The fact of the matter is, we will see what happens with publishers. Its seems to me that every major publisher has come and said we don't mind used games."

Shigeru Miyamoto expressed similar views to Fils-Amie yesterday telling Eurogamer "What's really important is viewing Nintendo almost like a toy company where we're making these things for people to play with. As a consumer you want to be able to keep those things for a long time and have those things from your youth that you can go back to and experience again"