Nintendo US Boss: Making Great Games Will Cut Down On Used Game Sales

There's been a lot of talk about used games recently, mostly due to the fact that Microsoft officially complicated the process of used games sales. This was the first time in gaming console history that used games received an ever-so-slight denial in the gaming industry. However, Nintendo doesn't really see what the problem is, as long as developers are making good games.

Speaking to Polygon, Nintendo's US big wig Reggie Fils-Aime said that while supporting used games is critical, so is creating good games to prevent them from having to be resold in the first place. Fils-Aime insists that lasting appeal with games has a huge impact on whether or not their resold, and obviously, he says that the lasting appeal to Nintendo games is "super strong."

Fils-Aime notes that as long as developers make great games that have a strong lasting appeal, then there's no need for a gamer to want to get rid of a game and resell it to a friend or trade it in at a used game store.

"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."

Of course, this would only be ideal in the perfect world, and in the real world, there are sadly some not-so-great games out there that make their way through multiple gamers' hands, being handed down multiple times, which is why used games exist, according to Fils-Aime, but in the end, console makers have decided that it's up to the publishers on whether they'll allow used game sales on their own titles.

As far as what Nintendo publishers think on having their games resold, Fils-Aime says that "every major publisher" noted that they "don't mind" it. However, downloadable content is becoming more and more popular. More publishers are embracing digital downloads and console makers don't seem to mind, since digital content can't be resold or traded in.

Of course, this kind of model has been available on the PC for quite some time through Valve's Steam digital gaming service, but digital downloads haven't quite hit the popularity that Steam is at, even though Steam doesn't allow users to resell the digital games that they buy. Overall, it doesn't seem Nintendo's too worried about used games, and it's a bit of a trivial issue for the company at this point.

SOURCE: Polygon