| Sky Render said: If it is a WiiWare promotion scheme, then why is only the North American branch doing it? And do they really think it's going to have any effect at all on WiiWare? I can't imagine very many people are going to opt for a $10 N64 game or $8 SNES game over a $5 or $10 WiiWare game, when the WiiWare game is a.) new, and b.) likely using the Wii's controls to their utmost instead of being an old-school game that uses non-motion controls. I just find that explanation to be a bit too illogical business-wise. |
Well, here's the thing: you have to remember that Nintendo has their fingers in many pies:
1. Boxed Wii software.
2. Boxed DS software.
3. DL VC games.
4. DL WW games.
Not only do they want to get WW up and running as, essentially, its own platform, but they know that consumers only have so much money to spend on games across all platforms and, I imagine, they have a big, fancy, spreadsheet that takes into account what they know about household income and spending habits; hours spent playing games per day/week/month ; how many titles are already on VC/WW; and, finally, took a look at some of the issues XBLA is having (where they're talking about removing software to try to drive up demand for titles) and decided that, for now, this is the best balance they can manage between all these competing interests while still squeezing out maximal profit.
There's also the possibility that, given the current strength of the dollar that they are intentionally choking off the supply in the hopes of a rebound (this is 100% speculation, but Nintendo is known for counting every nickle, dime and yen thrice).
As for the different territory issue, as others have noted, each subsidiary does have a degree of autonomy to decide what/when/where to launch something.
Naturally, of course, this doesn't make anybody particularly happy and I know of at least one publisher that is very not happy with the situation (they speculated on the WiiWare issue, btw) but Nintendo makes the rules for good (mostly theirs) or ill.
