(NOTE, I linked to Slashdot because the original article is paywalled)
Nintendo pulled its products from Amazon’s US site after a disagreement over unauthorized sales, meaning the e-commerce company missed out on the recent debut of Nintendo’s Switch 2 – the biggest game console launch of all time.
From a report: The Japanese company stopped selling on Amazon after noticing that third-party merchants were offering games for sale in the US at prices that undercut Nintendo’s advertised rates, according to a person familiar with the situation. Enterprising sellers were buying Nintendo products in bulk in Southeast Asia and exporting them to the US, said the person, who requested anonymity to discuss confidential information.
Nintendo product listings started disappearing from Amazon’s US site last year, gaming news outlets reported at the time. The listings had previously appeared as “Sold by Amazon,” which typically denotes merchandise the online retailer buys directly from brands. Some Nintendo products remained on the site, but they were listed by independent merchants who sell their goods on Amazon’s sprawling online marketplace.
So this is the whole parallel import argument, and legally there are ways to enforce proper sourcing, and Amazon has been cracking down on this, but apparently not enough for Nintendo, who is very trigger happy with lawyers, so kinda shocking to see them pull out completely.
I’m surprised when smaller companies pull out of Amazon, because they lose out on the exposure to customers that Amazon can provide. However, as the article mentioned, the Switch 2 enjoyed the “biggest game console launch of all time” clearly indicating that Nintendo already has the market penetration and brand recognition to forgo Amazon completely without taking a loss.
If they are smart, they won’t. Otherwise what is the point of THEM kicking Amazon to the curb? By not honoring any warranties they will get their point across and probably eliminate a few gray market sellers.
What they should be doing is putting out a bulletin saying that anyone buying on Amazon will NOT have warranty protection. That might get Amazon to tighten some more screws.
That could back fire with the consumer … it would be better putting the bulletin out saying that units bought from non-authorized sellers will not have warranty protection. This would set the standard and not just single out Amazon.
The percentage of Nintendo buyers who would be aware of the change would be tiny. Limited to those who had a device failure during the warranty period.
Large numbers of manufacturers will not honor their warranty for Ebay purchases, and there are still significant numbers of “new” items sold on Ebay.
And those who experience a failure will be equally po’d at every party involved in the transaction.
And I’m sure the Walmart has their name and contact information to be able to go after the guy that returned something they didn’t buy there and is useless.
I love it when TWO scammers get caught in the same web of lies.
EDIT – I see he actually bought it USED from Walmart and got a ‘deal.’ Be careful what you wish for…
Years ago I tried to sell some of my old Wii U games on amazon as used and for some reason they wouldn’t let me. You had to apply for approval to sell them and I was denied.
So of course I am curious that Amazon would allow third party vendors to sell a large amount of new video games while undercutting them unless at some point they got rid of the gate keeping? If Amazon makes way more money allowing third party vendors selling questionable video games of which they probably sell a ton per person then what I assume is a very small profit on a console someone only buys once.
It does surprise me in this day and age that such large companies such as Nintendo even need Amazon? I do wonder what the wholesale price of a console is. Nintendo doesn’t even really need any marketplace/retail store if they had the logistics in place to fulfill all their own orders. I would love to be a fly on the wall at Nintendo and see just how much money they make selling digital content vs making sure a game is in stock on release day. Also curious just how much money Amazon lost by not selling switch 2s. Walmart and Targets websites both crashed during preorders and launch’s and you would have to figure out the expense of running extra bandwidth and tech support for a temporary amount of time.
One of the old-time forum vets made a 100317 post, back in the “Age of Jive,”* on this subject that I’ve never forgotten:
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose
*
The “Age of Jive” refers to the era when the Jive Platform was used to host the ASF (“Amazon Seller Forums”), between early 2012 & 2Feb2018, when it was superseded by the Discourse Platform - the same software suite that powers the SAS fora - which was used between that latter date & the 012623 advent of the NSFE.
Generally speaking the term “OSFE” is typically used by most to refer to that particular iteration - the “Age of Discourse” - but it could be applied to earlier iterations of the ASF as well…
There was a lot of excitement over various Nintendo deals on Amazon for Prime Day, but then I remembered this and was confused, so…a bit of a (very late) update?
