How Nintendo Can Give Gamestop the Middle Finger

Nintendo, this is definitely your chance.




You can totally shove it in the face of Gamestop for what they did to your video game.




You can give them the business-infused middle finger.


Gamestop took thousands of copies of a rare game you released in the Western Hemisphere a couple years ago and are now selling it at its current ridiculous $90 price tag. This is extremely a slap in the face to the hardcore gamers everywhere that had fought to the death to bring the game into the United States and Europe. Not to mention, they are attempting to screw you over by collecting all the profits since its “used.”

But Nintendo, you can win back the hardcore crowd, get the attention of the industry, and gain some momentum for the Nintendo WiiU. The solution is quite simple:


Make it a downloadable game.


Personally, if I ran Nintendo and witnessed Gamestop taking two of my games and jacking up the prices unfairly to take advantage of their rarity, I would make them free downloadables on the struggling WiiU system. It would be a fantastic way to convince people to buy a WiiU---which is something that nothing outside Pikmin 3 and Earthbound has been able to accomplish. Xenoblade Chronicles being a free downloadable game on Nintendo’s internet service would be a great marketing move and an excellent prelude to the highly-anticipated release of X coming out in 2014.

But since few things in gaming life are free I would not expect Nintendo to pull off such a dramatic move, even if it would be a move that would provide nothing but benefits. Either way though, making it available digitally on the WiiU and Wii internet browser at regular price would not only send a message, but would also kick Gamestop right on the stomach as the anti-Gamestop campaign picks up steam.And trust me, I can see hordes of gamers willing to download this game, which has picked up lots of positive steam since its American localization.

This would also serve as a nice experience to see just how effective it would be to release a game just digitally and avoid the physical copies. Now that your only option to obtain a physical copy is to learn Japanese, have a European Wii, or fork over nasty amounts of cash on the EBays of the internet, making it downloadable would be a potential glimpse into the future of gaming.

However, Nintendo has a chance to truly become cynically evil while at the same time become a temporary champion to the hardcore crowd. Making the game accessible to the WiiU and Wii owners for free would be the perfect counterpunch to the rising ridiculousness of Gamestop. Xenoblades Chronicles can alter the course of the history of the WiiU history. The ball is in Nintendo’s court.


Time to take action.

Make Xenoblade Chronicles, currently one of the highest-rated Nintendo games in the past half-decade, fully available to the world again—in digital form.

How the Gaming Industry can "Stop" Gamestop

The Gamestop Battles have been heating up…..again. Before it was the major controversy involving Capcom and EA trying to find ways to prevent resale. Then we had the XBox One and their DRM disaster. And now in the latest news, a PS4 developer is criticizing the practices of Gamestop and its concept of making extra money off of pre-purchased games. He says that the used game sales from Gamestop affects the game development companies and hurts the gaming industry overall.

Now, while I will save this argument for another day (You know, the argument about how the gaming industry seems to be the ONLY one mildly upset at the resales of their product as opposed to movies, cars, houses, electronics, etc. etc. etc.) , there is a fun simple way to combat the supposed business-killing ways of the Gamestop:





Stop. Being. So. ****ing. Expensive.


Pricing is everything, especially in a tougher economy. Nintendo’s battle against Blockbuster was short-lived in the early 90s because a) Nintendo was making fantastic money nonetheless, especially between 1994-1996 leading up to the Virtual Boy disaster and the rise of the Playstation and b) it was the 90s and everybody had money back then. The Clinton Days were good days full of good money flowing left and right.

Nowadays however, we don’t have that type of luxury. The 2000s brought upon some tough times. We are still attempting to recover. And with that the better deal always won, regardless of quality. The last time we had a good system that was the best in the business and the most economically affordable was the Playstation 2 about a decade ago. The best bang for your buck has been the victor in the past couple generations: the Playstation 2, the Nintendo Wii, and now the Nintendo 3DS which is literally eating away at the handheld market.

You are releasing $60 games with $5-$10 DLC packs left and right. And we are not including the increasing prices of online play, controllers, accessories, and other amenities. Games back then ranged from $35-$50 and we were done. Nintendo used to do their Player’s Choice on the SNES-N64 days to great success. PS2 had their share of Greatest Hits. Nowadays they still do it, but with smaller fanfare (Nintendo used to give their games ribbons) and less of a willingness to cut prices to so many games. Madden 2012 is about a year old, and still has the same price. And football season finished back in February. Why?

I am repeating this: if you want to defeat Gamestop and win the Eighth Generation you need to become the most economically friendly of the Big 3. And for the future, you need to be friendlier towards the backwards-compatibility feature. You think Xbox 360 and PS3’s heavy restrictions on what previous-gen games were allowed to be played helped them at all? Hell no. Nintendo took the better route and allowed ALL Gamecube games to be backwards-compatible, and even the controllers themselves could be re-used.

Is it a coincidence that one of the most-played games from the Sixth Generation (XB, PS2, GC, Dreamcast R.I.P.) happens to be Super Smash Brothers Melee? And now it turns out that both the Xbox One and the PS4 will also not be backwards-compatible. I am just saying, we have sent spacecraft to Pluto----it is not impossible to give improving technology the ability to play older games. If there is ANY advantage the WiiU has, it’s being the only Big 3 system to allow the play of Seventh Generation games without having to pay extra.

You wondering why Gamestop is making all this extra money for used games, yet however make it impossible for newer systems to play older games that gamers had already purchased. You think we are going to use the disks to hold paper when they become unplayable in the newer systems? You think lower middle class families would rather fork over $400 on a new system with $60 games as opposed to hitting a Gamestop and purchasing a $75 used older system with $10-$30 video games available? Be serious.

Make your older games available through the DLC. Don’t be afraid to drop prices on older games. Can you believe that Smash Brothers Brawl is still $50? This game is the best-selling fighting game in HISTORY!! Drop the price a little you pricks, you are essentially begging for us to search elsewhere to find cheaper product.

I am not a Gamestop fan by any means, but they will forever be the sexier alternative for poorer gamers and families and people just looking for a quick good game without having to sacrifice too much of the wallet. Gamestop and the other smaller game stores with similar concepts will continue to bust profits as long as it becomes tougher to have access to these older games in modern times. Gamestop secretly loves that the bigger higher-profile games are $60 at least, it makes their job that much easier.

Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, you need more cheaper games. You need to drop the prices on your systems and accessories and extra details if you want the places like Gamestop to supposedly crack into your profits. We need more $40, $30, $20 games. We need more games from the past through DLC and the infamous Virtual Console. We just need more options and opportunities to dish out smaller amounts of money. The video game industry needs to be more like the car industry: an extremely wide variety of options and prices to go with it. If every car was priced the same as a new Mercedes, I assure you more people would carpool or find other ways to get around.



Gamestop isn’t the problem. The ever-increasing expenses of the industry is.

XBox 3's Attempted Murder of Gamestop

So there is an article on IGN talking about how the next XBox system may disallow for used games to be played on your system. In other words, the only games you can play on your XBox are games that you purchased yourself. Similar to what they do to the PC programs, they might have some sort of code to enter so that the property becomes yours and only yours. I mildly understand the reasoning behind it (after all, we are all in the business of making money) but this is hands-down a pitiful idea that will potentially kill jobs, limit mainstream appeal, and also look quite douche-like when compared to the competitors. If Micro$oft was smart, they would squash this idea immediately. Now i know this is all rumor and speculation, but I wouldn't put it past them to contemplate such an idea.

Let’s start with who it affects the most: Gamestop and the slew of indie-game stores (Play-n-Trade, Game Traders, etc.). Most of the profits from these places come from used games. What would separate Gamestop from much larger companies like Target, Best Buy, and especially Wal-Mart? Part of Gamestop’s appeal is its linking to the past and the ability to offer much older games and cheaper video games from the current generation. We can’t all afford $60 games from the getgo, there are hundreds of families that wait several years before purchasing a system to buy the games we’ve all already enjoyed at smaller prices. If I were running Gamestop, I would threaten to pull all XBox games off the shelves if they dare make this move.

And how can we possibly allow someone to borrow our game if they can no longer play it on their system? We have to bring our own XBox just to show them a game that we bought? That’s outright stupid, and diminishes the chances of a smaller-budget game of getting widespread fame. In the history of gaming there have been video games that were met with lackluster sales but over time develop themselves a crazy fanbase through word-of-mouth (and a mix of used game sales and borrowing from others). Nintendo’s best example is Earthbound, a video game that flopped like a fish out of water in 1995. However, in the years following thanks to word-of-mouth it’s gotten so much more popular that it has become a true-blue part of Nintendo culture. If a game flops in the future, it will remain a flop because there’s no other way to spread the game’s magic---unless you throw in the $60.

And if Microsoft does go through with this idea, what would prevent them from increasing the price of games a little? Would $65 be out of the question? $70? And with no used games allowed, you have no other choice but to buy it full price or wait years for them to decide to drop the price a little. The XBox 360’s lead has already been diminishing, why further the pain by throwing this monkey wrench in the system? I don’t care how amazing-looking your new XBox is going to be, if you pull off this Microsoft Office trick there’s just no reason why I would buy the 720 as opposed to the PS4.

Bottom Line: In another example of a prick powerhouse company trying to make more money, there are rumors of the next XBox disallowing your system to play used games. This my friends is wrong, ridiculous, atrocious, and overall just a plain stupid idea. So we can buy used houses, cars, clothes, computers, televisions, toys, books, apartments, cameras, but video games are a no-no? Microsoft, I can not, will not, shall not support your system if you go through with this. And I am sure there are plenty of gamers that wouldn’t mind flocking to the competition if it means them actually being able to take a game to a friend’s house. I know the goal in every company is to make the maximum profit possible, but if it means threatening the future of several companies and businesses and also financially shunning off the financially less-fortunate crowd, I for one will be against this decision until the very end.