This week Nintendo launched an Amazon storefront where customers can directly purchase codes for digital versions of (mostly first-party, for the moment) Wii U and 3DS games.
It’s a relatively minor move for Nintendo (the company has had a similar digital games storefront on Amazon Japan for about a year now), that reflects the Japanese company’s ongoing efforts to embrace overseas demand for digital distribution of its games across channels outside of Nintendo’s extant eShop.
Nintendo’s late chief Satoru Iwata told company shareholders in May that “the digital download sales increase of about 30 percent compared to the previous fiscal year should be mainly attributable to such facts as the sales of the digital versions of both the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U software increasing, especially in the overseas markets.”
Gamasutra analyst Matt Matthews previously noted that at the start of 2015, Nintendo had managed to grow its digital sales business to roughly 10 percent of its total software sales revenue. That’s quite small for most big game companies but significant for the historically download-averse Nintendo, especially in light of the fact that the figure was closer to 2 percent when Nintendo launched the 3DS in 2011.
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2015