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

Smiff

Smiff

Emutalk Member
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.
 
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OP
Smiff

Smiff

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

Josep

eyerun4phun
Smiff said:


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

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

Smiff

Emutalk Member
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

Josep

eyerun4phun
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;)
 
OP
Smiff

Smiff

Emutalk Member
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

Jaz

Ex-Mod
Smiff said:
Jaz, yes exactly.
Click to expand...

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.
 
OP
Smiff

Smiff

Emutalk Member
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.
 
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UltraThing

UltraThing

New member
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

Stalkid64

Citizen(sixty)four
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

crhylove

Banned
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
 
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Stalkid64

Stalkid64

Citizen(sixty)four
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.
 
OP
Smiff

Smiff

Emutalk Member
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

Jaz

Ex-Mod
Smiff said:
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.
Click to expand...

Yeah, have deleted his post as this thread clearly isn't bullshit. :plain2:
 
64ultramaniac

64ultramaniac

*
Smiff said:
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.
Click to expand...
I didn't said that for your thread or your post.This was about the EC situation and their dirty games...
 
R

ra5555

N64 Newbie
UltraThing said:
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
Click to expand...

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