Nintendo's anti-used games policy: make games people don't trade

If game makers feel used game sales are eating into their profit margins maybe they should think about making games people want to keep, Nintendo of America boss Reggie Fils-Aime reasons.

Speaking to Polygon, Fils-Aime said the used games cycle doesn't affect Nintendo very much.

"That impacts games that are annualized and candidly also impacts games that are maybe undifferentiated much more than [it] impacts Nintendo content," he said.

"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."

Interestingly, Fils-Aime also said that an anti-used games stance isn't something he has noticed behind the scenes, which lines up with EA's protest that it had nothing to do with Microsoft's increasingly bizarre-seeming licensing system.

"We will see what happens with publishers, but it seems to me that every major publisher has come and said we don't mind used games," he said.

Elsewhere in the interview, Fils-Aime reiterated Nintendo's message that disc-based retail isn't going anywhere.

Thanks, GameInformer.