Nintendo: Want to block pre-owned? Then make better games

Spirited Nintendo America boss Reggie Fils-Aime has said that there’s a very simply solution to the ‘problem’ of pre-owned – make better games.

The exec was also keen to point out that Nintendo has the lowest software trade-in rate of any platform holder – a fact perfectly illustrated by the ability of a lot of Nintendo software to retain its value on the pre-owned market for far longer than its opposition.

"We have been very clear, we understand that used games are a way for some consumers to monetize their games," Fils-Aime told Polygon. "They will buy a game, play it, bring it back to their retailer to get credit for their next purchase. Certainly, that impacts games that are annualized and candidly also impacts games that are maybe undifferentiated much more than [it] impacts Nintendo content.

Why is that? Because the replayability of our content is super strong. The consumer wants to keep playing Mario Kart. The consumer want to keep playing New Super Mario Bros. They want to keep playing Pikmin. So we see that the trade-in frequency on Nintendo content is much less than the industry average – much, much less.

So for us, we have been able to step back and say that we are not taking any technological means to impact trade-in and we are confident that if we build great content, then the consumer will not want to trade in our games."

Fils-Aime also believes that the tremendous reception received by Jack Tretton in Sony’s E3 conference was in reality more of an anti-Microsoft reaction.

Either way, the colourful exec seems doubtful that publishers will chose to pursue an anti-pre-owned strategy.

"The fact of the matter is, we will see what happens with publishers," he added. "It seems to me that every major publisher has come and said we don’t mind used games."