New Wii U Promotion in Japan Makes Select First Party Games Cheaper in the eShop than at Retail

Wii U owners can get a slight discount on Pikmin 3, LEGO City: Undercover, and The Wonderful 101 if they download them from the eShop.

By Kevin Knezevic. Posted 07/03/2013 19:00 2 Comments     ShareThis

In an effort to prove its commitment to digital distribution (and save fans a little money in the process), Nintendo has announced a new promotion in Japan that gives Wii U owners a small discount on select first party games if they download them from the eShop.

Beginning next week, Wii U owners in Japan can save 10 percent on Pikmin 3, LEGO City: Undercover, and The Wonderful 101 if they purchase the titles through the eShop during the week of their release. Pikmin 3 will be the first title eligible for the promotion and will be on sale from July 13 to July 19; LEGO City will follow on July 25-31; and The Wonderful 101 will wrap the promotion up on August 24-30.

Nintendo has traditionally lagged behind its competitors in the digital marketplace, but the company has been slowly taking steps to improve its own digital services, shying away from the strict points system used by Wii, releasing its major first party games simultaneously in stores and on the eShop, and even offering special promotions (such as the “buy two Kirby games, get one free” deal it ran following the Virtual Console release of Kirby’s Dreamland 3, Kirby Super Star, and Kirby’s Dream Course) on some of its titles. There’s no word on if a similar promotion will be launched in North America, but it would certainly give Wii U owners nice incentive to purchase full-scale games from the eShop.

Source: Siliconera

2 Responses to “New Wii U Promotion in Japan Makes Select First Party Games Cheaper in the eShop than at Retail”

  • 30 points
    Specters says...

    Bring this to America! I already buy most my Wii U games digitally cause I would rather support Nintendo than Gamestop. Always felt the more they make the eShop like Steam (lower prices, self publishing, free updates, promotional sales, etc) the better the eShop will do in the long run.
    Though if they did do this, they will also have to unlock games from being hardware restricted to being account based so I can use it on friends’ Wii Us.

  • 267 points
    decoupage says...

    I’ve been feeling ripped off paying from six to ten dollars for SNES-N64 gen games on the e-shop; while I pay six to ten dollars for PSOne, and PS2 games on PSN.
    The value really isn’t there, and I’ve only bought a handful of games for the Wii, and WIIU e-shops.
    That said, bring on the savings and I might buy more than one classic Nintendo game a year.

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