Nintendo fined £90million+ for "trying to rig the computer game market"

[Smiff]

apparently, just saw this on the news. ironic when nintendo's stuff is cheaper than anyone elses (?) maybe it's the games... apparently prices are artificially higher in Germany and somewhere else (Finland?) and they were stopping imports... tut tut.

edit: yep, here's the story
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2375967.stm

edit2: ah, this dates back the mid 90s, when nintendo stuff really was a ripoff IIRC.

[AlphaWolf]

yeah, chry posted that here a few days ago:

http://www.emutalk.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9120

[Smiff]

ah, the story broke an hour before i posted, ZDnet managed to see into the future. sorry.

[Josep]

Originally posted by Smiff


edit2: ah, this dates back the mid 90s, when nintendo stuff really was a ripoff IIRC.

so is this old news or is something like this happening right now?!;)

[Jaz]

Originally posted by Smiff
this dates back the mid 90s, when nintendo stuff really was a ripoff

I remember when NES and SNES games were £50+ in the UK.

[Smiff]

hehe, well if you look at the date on the story, you see the BBC posted it 55 minutes before my last edit, so i'd say i'm not so slow :p

Anyway the relevance of this is that it could hurt Nintendo in the run up to Christmas, i wonder if it will put parents off buying Nintendo stuff for their kiddies... that's a huge part of N's sales..

Also it's a very large fine.

[Josep]

damn, will nintendo get a "slow-down" from this so to speak? like less games being released, or delays in hardware and stuff? game companies like sega are there own, and wouldn't be effected, am right? i dunno, asking;)

[Smiff]

Jaz, yes exactly. The thing is that their distributors also got fines, John Menzies (now owned by Smith's, I thought?) were mentioned as having to pay 10-20 million.. ouch.

Anyone know how much this fine is a % of N's profits?

[Jaz]

Originally posted by Smiff
Jaz, yes exactly.

It's still happening now, although not as heavy as it used to be. I mean, Nintendo games retail at what, £45, whereas PS2 games tend to be £40. Only a fiver, I know, but to a parent buying a few games for their children, those fivers add-up.

[Smiff]

this is about the difference in prices of the same product between countries in the EU... it's like Levi's trying to stop the grey importing of jeans by supermarkets to undercut official channels, totally legal, great for consumers, pisses the mnfrs off royally, so N deserved a bashing (though where they got that figure from i don't know, looks like they were trying to send a signal to other games companies - "don't try this" and N got unlucky. apparently Britain was cheap (!), relative to Germany etc.. (what were SNES games there? £70-80?) but yeah there still something fishy going on here.

[UltraThing]

Now i really wish I'd bought an X-Box or PS2 instead of my Gamecube. Microsoft and Sony would NEVER do anything dirty like that! :D

[Stalkid64]

You can just picture the scene at Nintendo Japan however.
Satora Iwata puts hand in pocket: "Will cash be okay?" ;)
Strangely I have no problem with the price of `Cube games. Most are £34.99 - £39.99 (plus the kick-ass CUBE voucher book for WH Smiths...) for good quality games. Of course it'd be nice to see them go down to the DreamCast level of £29.99 (ah... a game every week) but hey, you pays your money you gets your quality.

Remember - SFII was originally £60-£70 (yikes!) for the SNES on release, many bought it and regreted no part of the cost. Mario 64 / Goldeneye / Zelda:TOoT were around £45, many bought them and rightly recognised them as the greatest games ever. Super Mario Sunshine / SMB / Luigi's Mansion and more can be had for as little as £34.99, and are superb games. I haven't ever paid more than £39.99 for a NGC game, and anyone who has needs to wander down the road a bit further really.
Anyway... this *is* kinda old news, as that was back when Nintendo were well-known to be fixing prices, it's only now the case has come through though. Nintendo aren't even with THE any longer... besides, the games are after all where they make the money, and why we can get hold of cheap (i.e. subsidised) NGC's.

[crhylove]

yes stalkid all those games are great games, but the issue isn't game quality... it's price fixing.

expect more piracy as a direct result of this. that is the only thing that will really cost big N big S MS, or any of those corporate scum bags real money.

the problem isn't profits, value or anything like that, the problem is ILLEGAL unETHICAL, and IMMORAL business practices. what do you expect when the sole purpose of any corporation BY DEFINITION is to make more and more money regardless of the quality of volume of products it sells? in fact volume and quality are A BAD THING, because they incur cost.

this is the whole problem.. and the reason why i had the link so much earlier at:

http://www.emutalk.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9120

is because i read /. which is a meta news server.

BBC et all is like the slowest news service around, besides fox which spends lots of time and money making sure to help propagandize for the american government.

we all live in "virtual democracys" just like in the horrible game civ:ctp.

bah... i hope the limeys and rest of eu bankrupt N and start going after the others as well.

rhy

oh yeah, and smiff:

http://www.emutalk.net/showthread.php?s=&postid=89961#post89961

your iq is too high for you to read that bbc crap anyway... log onto www.slashdot.org brother... :D

[Stalkid64]

Talking of the BBC... Already I feel like a BBC 2 Friday night Buffy repeat; "Bored now."
(Okay, that was both easy AND clever, admit it ;))
To paraphrase `The Vampire Lestat`'s "System"... "Why won't you (let the damn subject) DIE!"
Not every topic has to degenerate into this garbage.

[64ultramaniac]

:bs:

[Smiff]

seems there is more to this story

http://theregister.co.uk/content/54/27852.html

[Smiff]

more what? droopy flags? look it's very simple, if you're not interested, don't reply, jesus I see why people get pissed off with EmuTalk.

[Jaz]

Originally posted by Smiff
more what? droopy flags? look it's very simple, if you're not interested, don't reply, jesus I see why people get pissed off with EmuTalk.

Yeah, have deleted his post as this thread clearly isn't bullshit. :plain2:

[64ultramaniac]

Originally posted by Smiff
more what? droopy flags? look it's very simple, if you're not interested, don't reply, jesus I see why people get pissed off with EmuTalk.
I didn't said that for your thread or your post.This was about the EC situation and their dirty games...

[ra5555]

Originally posted by UltraThing
Now i really wish I'd bought an X-Box or PS2 instead of my Gamecube. Microsoft and Sony would NEVER do anything dirty like that! :D

I would think that Microsoft is much worse cause it almost a monopoly and in my opinion an os should not cost 200 dollars!

[crhylove]

corporation = evil

and not the cool "bad ass" evil that is so popular on and offline.

more like the "we don't care if you starve in the streets" evil.

but afaik that "i wish i'd bought an xbox or ps2, they'd NEVER do that" was a joke. seems awful sarcastic to me anyway, i can't really see how anyone would actually belive that given the ludicrous liscencing schemes that both MS and sony have purpotrated on a whole realm of industries, foremost (to me) being the computer one.

rhy

[tbag]

Nintendo would never do shit like that from what ive known

:bs:

Anyhow nintendo can recover from that easily :D

[AlphaWolf]

Originally posted by tbag
Nintendo would never do shit like that from what ive known

:bs:

Anyhow nintendo can recover from that easily :D

The fact remains that they did....and about recovering, they don't realy need to because they have somewhere around $6 billion in cash reserves. The problem they are facing though, is their net profits dropped by about $300 million last year, and are continuing to drop at that rate. This certainly isn't helping.

[crhylove]

on a related topic:

i'm incredibly sick of that little bs flag.

can we ban the bs flag?

that'd be great!

rhy

(no offense to the artist, it's just over used/abused by now eh?)

[tbag]

Yeah its abit dull it needs like a smilie next to it doing a salute or something but banning it is ok

chances are this thread will be closed by Jaz now ;)

[UltraThing]

Yes CRHY of course my earlier post about "wish I'd bought PS2 or Xbox" was sarcasm. I have no illusions about Nintendo, and while I think your views regarding corporate greed are perhaps moot and puerile to some extent - since no likely "revolution" is on the horizon -- I still also 100% agree with what youre saying.

Nintendo is a corporation, with the sole intent of making a profit, and as such are not above price fixing and such in any way. Of course they did it. I think it is of some relevance that this practice is not only normal in Japan but is a longstanding accepted part of Japanese culture. They basically treat business as war, and "all's fair in love and war." Check out how the "keiretsu" system works in Japan and compare it to this ... the Europe thing is small potatoes.

But as to whether that somehow makes me think less of Nintendo than I ever did before ... hell no. Sega was no better back when Nintendo was doing this and Microsoft and Sony are both modern epitomes of all that you have recently decried about the evils of the corporation.

There is another evil, though, and that is government. And I highly suspect that the fledgling EU boys looked at Nintendo as a very fat cash cow back in the early 90's and saw a fine source of capital. What Nintendo did is done by all competitors in all markets, to the extent that theyre able. Nintendo just happened to be riding high at the time.

[tbag]

Nintendo is older then many of us here and besides it owns the world with GBA and the fact GBA is region free makes it worth a good buy (with a flash linker kit ;))

Anyhow GBA takes me back to the snes :cool:

Funny thing is there is 25-26 million people in Australia and 2 million plus of those people own a GBA thats about 3-4 billion worth :happy: plus literally millions of games boosts it to probably about 10-20 billion :cool:

Just remember that doesnt include GB/GBP/GBC

Anyhow i rest my case :D

[AlphaWolf]

You know, that is kinda funny, the major players in the video game industry were sega and nintendo, two small companies that found an interest in the market. Now that its grown, you get two huge companies, microsoft and sony, which have taken it over.


Originally posted by tbag
Nintendo is older then many of us

correction: all of us, nintendo has been around for well over a century.

[Sukh]

The fact is (me Nintendo fanboy remember...), Nintendo broke European law, caused Europeans to pay more than they should, and now they're being fined. They suffer the consequences of what they did. Maybe it'll be a message to other firms, telling them, "don't you friggin dare". The EU is slow, but it gets there, eventually.

And for people too lazy to find out what 90 million quid is, that's €/$ 150 million ish.

[Smiff]

yeah but how does this do any of us any good? it sure wont be the german kid who paid too much getting that money. Nintendo doesn't need this atm, they have enough competition from MS and Sony now. And finally, do you think they'll lower prices in Germany, or raise them here, or both? What about the fact that it costs companies more money to operate in some economies than others?

[Sukh]

That's not the point, it is the principle that matters. Anyway, they stopped their price riggin a few years back. This is punishment for what they did.

If say for example, if a criminal had knocked over a person in a street 3 years ago, and they had only just been caught, you'd still expect them to be punished wouldn't you? Even if they haven't recommited since then?

[Smiff]

yeah yeah, just provoking a debate :p lol

[crhylove]

well clearly governments failing globabally to enforce a free market economy IS the root of the problem, lord knows i wouldn't decry their innocence.

in fact, in the current anarchy that is the global economy, (given governments inability to curb monopolization) i expect alot more despotic behavior by corporations, and as usual:

the biggest will be the worst.

and yeah, i know i fight a loosing battle shouting the virtues of a revolution (particularly when the problem is global, how is a global revolution going to work?), but i am one to loose through ethical means, rather than win through lazy ideals.

regardless of the negative personal outcome.

rhy

[tbag]

Nice thinking there Chrylove BTW i should be able to give you some docs on emulating GC input within a few days :)

[Renegade]

LOL! rig the game market. what will they try next? this sounds of iraqish - "We're invading Kuwait because they flooded the oil market"