Nintendo games going day and date digital this summer

[Bane]

The program is starting with New Super Mario Bros. 2 on 3DS, and all first party Wii U games will have it at launch.

As expected, Nintendo plans on selling retail games digitally through the Nintendo Network. The first first-party game to be available at both retail and on the eShop will be New Super Mario Bros. 2, scheduled for release in August. And that will be just the beginning. "Starting from this software, the company will offer the software titles that Nintendo itself publishes in both packaged and digital download formats so that our consumers can choose the way to purchase them," the company announced at its most recent investors' meeting.

The digital release of NSMB2 is part of Nintendo's growing commitment to digital. "It is imperative for us to expand the exposure of the digital download products to potential consumers," the company admitted.

Representative of Nintendo's growing investment in digital is the fact that Wii U will launch with this functionality on day one. "Our consumers can choose either the packaged version or the digital download version of the same software from day one of the Wii U’s launch."

However, not willing to alienate retail, the company promises that digital games will be available for purchase at retail as well, through the use of prepaid cards. "Our consumers can visit retail outlets or the retailers’ online shopping sites, look for products of interest, make a purchase decision and actually pay for the product there. The retailers then can issue the 16-digit software exchange code."

Interestingly, retailers will be able to set their own prices for digital games sold in-store, much as they would with physical copies of games. "By taking this approach, there will not be a situation like 'there is no markdown for the digital products while markdowns are the norm for the packaged software.'"

Shacknews

Got to hand it to them, Nintendo seems to be really trying to catch up to the others in the online space. I just hope they have the know how to not put out a terrible or outright broken online experience.

Odd about the retail cards. Will there be much incentive to mark them down? A little card takes up much less space then a boxed product. I also wonder what Gamestop thinks about them.

[Indy_aka_Rex]

This is pointless for the Wii U considering it has no built-in hard drive....

[rm082e]

This is pointless for the Wii U considering it has no built-in hard drive....

Is that confirmed by Nintendo? The specs on that thing were so vague at the last E3 I wasn't sure if they had any storage on board or not. Sounded like they had not pinned down the final hardware specs at that time and I haven't heard of any updates since.

Seriously, if they put out a console in 2012 without a hard drive, even a tiny one...fuck...

[KageMaru]

This is pointless for the Wii U considering it has no built-in hard drive....

I thought it was planned to have onboard flash while allowing you to use any storage device you like (flash drive, external HDD, etc.)

[Indy_aka_Rex]

Is that confirmed by Nintendo? The specs on that thing were so vague at the last E3 I wasn't sure if they had any storage on board or not. Sounded like they had not pinned down the final hardware specs at that time and I haven't heard of any updates since.

Seriously, if they put out a console in 2012 without a hard drive, even a tiny one...fuck...

Yeah they said no built-in hard drive at E3 last year. On-board flash memory, but no built-in HDD.

I thought it was planned to have onboard flash while allowing you to use any storage device you like (flash drive, external HDD, etc.)

Yeah but considering the average filesize of a 360/PS3 game is about 5-6 gigs, and it was confirmed that Wii-U game discs would hold larger amounts of data than the DVD/DL-DVDs that Wii uses... Unless this thing has 16-32 GB of on-board flash (and knowing how cheap Nintendo is) I doubt it'll have enough for a game.

I could see them putting out an official hard drive add-on, but I don't see them supporting anything other than SD cards or flash drives, anything larger than x amount of gigs would probably be subject to limitations or need to be DRM'd to shit just to kee their environment "safe".

[Wick]

I'd much rather have a physical copy of a game, so this isn't something I'll buy into. There are more drawbacks to digital only.

[Badger3920]

I thought it was planned to have onboard flash while allowing you to use any storage device you like (flash drive, external HDD, etc.)

Would be need to see this sort of thing happen. Buy a terabyte drive once prices go back down again, set it and forget it.