Why Nintendo Makes Digital Games Limited Edition

Good news, everyone! Nintendo has stumped up the cash to localise the original Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light into English, just in time for its 30th anniversary! Bad news, everyone! It’s a limited edition release that won’t be available after March 2021! In our previous video on why Super Mario 3D All-Stars is a limited edition, we explained why Nintendo carefully allocates stock levels to avoid wasting resources. The most common response we got in the comments was: why does Nintendo limit digital releases? This is harder to answer, especially for a game like Fire Emblem which has generated extra localisation costs. It’s unlikely that this is the only time Nintendo will ever make use of this translation again, so why limit its availability? Commenters have been quick to note that Nintendo’s business model here is reminiscent of the Disney Vault, a marketing strategy wherein Disney used to temporarily issue home releases of their iconic films, before removing them from circulation. This creates FOMO, or the Fear of Missing Out, driving people to buy something they might not otherwise care about just in case they don’t get another chance. If this is Nintendo’s strategy, it definitely works.

01:18 - Super Mario 3D All-Stars quickly became Nintendo’s second best- selling game of the year, after Animal Crossing. Although, relying on FOMO doesn’t work forever. The shifting media landscape has meant that Disney has now abandoned this practice – it’s just not the best way to make money in 2020. The idea of a media Vault is inherently old-fashioned. Once upon a time, to make the most of their back-catalogue, Disney would periodically re-release their films in cinemas, around every ten years.

01:49 - This capitalised on an evergreen audience of children who hadn’t been born when these movies were last available. Then came the VHS, and the opportunity for audiences to own copies of their favourite films for the first time, rewatching them at home whenever they wanted. This was a problem for Disney, as to sell films on VHS would effectively kill their evergreen cinema returns. So, the Disney Vault was invented: old cartoons would be released on VHS for a limited time, before being locked away again, emulating the way that these films only came to the cinema once a decade. By generating FOMO, Disney made a lot of money. …For a while.

02:29 - Now, the House of Mouse has entirely abandoned this model of business. It turns out that selling a film once every ten years doesn’t make as much money as selling the same film to the same people every single month. Hence, subscription service Disney+ has been promoted with the tagline, “The Vault is open”. In the subscription service era, these old films aren’t worth keeping locked up any more. Nintendo knows this, and, indeed, is moving towards a subscription service model for delivering its older games.

02:59 - As we noted in our video about why 3D All-Stars took so long to make, Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa once told investors: “Subscription-based services are becoming common in all sorts of industries, not just the games industry…. “We believe that we need to further enrich these sorts of services in the future. Nintendo’s policy is that we will consider whether each product we offer is suited to a subscription model as we expand our business in the future.” Interestingly, Nintendo has decided that neither the games in 3D All- stars, nor Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light, are, quote, “suited to a subscription model” at this time. It seems that the company, for all its attempts to open the vault, Disney style, is still clinging to short-term sales instead of long term subscription cash.

03:48 - And, who can blame them? When 3D All-Stars is a package of emulated games and also one of the biggest sellers of the year, why wouldn’t Nintendo want to release Fire Emblem for a fee rather than giving it away on Nintendo Switch Online? Especially considering the sizeable translation costs incurred with localising the game for an English-speaking audience. So why limit the game’s availability? Well, it gives Nintendo flexibility in the future. The company can bring it back in a few years, Disney Vault style, and make quick cash all over again. Or, they can eventually bring it to Nintendo Switch Online if they decide to take the subscription model more seriously. Either way, the game is only here until March. It’s up to you to decide whether you want to buy it before it’s gone. Just bear in mind, either way it’ll almost certainly be back eventually. .