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Nintendo Fined $143m for Price-Fixing
kyz writes "The BBC is reporting that the anti-trust branch of the European Commission has fined Nintendo 146 million euros (roughly $143m) for preventing its distributors from selling games as cheaply as they are sold in other European Union countries. For example, "prices of Nintendo products were up to 65% higher in Germany or the Netherlands than in Britain".
Now if only the EU could do this with Microsoft, Levi Strauss and the MPAA members..."
All they have to do is make a Pokemon game, and then paint it 4 different colors.
....the president of Nintendo flew up into the air and coins exploded from his body?
Does anyone else remember getting a check from Nintendo (in the late 80s) for like $5 or $10? Apparently they were price fixing the NES Unit for $99, and were order to pay a fixed amount to every registered NES owner.
Disclaimer: I am not one of those people you see protesting around every IMF meetings
With that said, I swear to god, multinational cooperations have no conscience. Turn on the news, and all you see is the Enrons, Microsofts, and all these other coopertions who do everything they can to screw the consumer and their employees to make an extra penny. Good for the Europeans, bout damn time someone smacked those companies down, even if it is one with good Karma like nintendo.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
...that as part of the ruling, the head executives of the branches of Nintendo International concerned with this case will have large barrels hurled at them by a giant ape while trying to get up several stories of floors. In a press release, one of the executives said simply, "BEEP."
We now have confirmed reports from an informed Orange County minister that Ethel is still an active communist.
If Nintendo sells units for more money in a country with less demand, it's illegal? Price-fixing? Nintendo competes in one of the fiercest markets around. *BOGGLE*
<Amanda`> I just went out to the parking lot in my bathrobe to exchange warez CDs.
Nintendo has only loved the pocketbooks of their users, nothing more.
People have already mentioned their price fixing the NES, but how about their security chips and their rabid hate of Tengen? And then there's the Game Genie and how Nintendo did their best to put Camerica out of business.
Nintendo just ain't cool when it comes to anything that lowers their share of pocketbook abuse. Always has been, always will be.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Normally it's the UK that has the highest prices in Europe.
But the period they were fined for was only 1991-1998. That still leaves the past 4 years to be accounted for.
But then again Gamecube games are still a lot cheaper than X-box and PS2 games if you know where to shop so maybe they have learnt their lesson.
They will fine the DVD consortium for region coding. I'm sure that it's cheaper to buy american DVDs than the the euro ones that are likely released much later.
Because of this Nintendo will have to cut prices across the board. The red potion in the original Zelda will only cost 20, and you only need 80 coins in Super Mario Bros. to get an extra life.
The lead attorney for Nintendo, upon hearing the verdict, angrily tried shutting off the power to the courtroom while screaming "FUCK THAT SHIT MAN, THE FUCKING SYSTEM CHEATS! I HAD THIS SUIT WON".
Other attorneys on the case were quoted as saying that the lead attorney had a copy of the trial saved on a memory card, and would try his closing arguments over and over again until he won.
This is an important less, corporate boys and girls.
If you're fixing prices, then you'd better make sure that you charge the same high price in every single country in the EU.
Got that?
You can still catch flak for uniformly high pricing, though, but it beats this kind of bad press and fine crap.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
DVD's have a built-in way to enforce trade restrictions: region encoding. Of course, film distributors will claim it's about release dates or other such crap; but in reality, region encoding was always intended as an anti-free trade measure.
The distributors want to extract as much money as they can from each market: while they can easily get $18 for a DVD in the US, that would be way too high in China.
The way to scuttle this is to reform copyright to be free trade- and fair use-friendly: demand that, as a condition of receiving copyright protection, distributors not cripple the product in any way---no "copy protection," no region encoding, etc.---and allow users to buy and sell and resell them as they please, and to make copies for archival purposes or for limited distribution to friends. (Note: Your 10,000 closest friends on Gnutella don't count.)
OTOH, if the distributors want to put in anti-free trade or anti-fair use measures, they obviously don't need copyright protection. (LOL)
The point of this proposal is simply to shift the balance back to the center, away from the veritable power orgy for content owners that exists today. Reasonable people realize that copyright, patent, and trademark protections exist for a reason; reasonable people do not believe that these protections should come at the expense of all liberty for users.
Cheers,
Kyle
[ home ]
No - not if no-one's willing to sell it to them. And Nintendo were using their clout with retailers to ensure that no-one was.
That's the entire point of the case.
Cheers,
Ian
not that i am a big fan of nintendo, how could the EU enforce a rule that the price of anything sold has to be the same across the EU states. In that article they compare the price of cubes sold in Britain & Germany. Does this essentially mean that the services (shipping, handling etc)would invariably cost me the same in germany & Britan ?
More over, there could always be the additional language barrier & translation costs for the cubes or any other product. Wouldnt it be a valid argument for price hike from nintendos side ? (although 65% is a little too much)
Siggy Say, Siggy Do
charge what they want? If its overpriced, tehres one simple answer: dont buy it. Its not as tho these products mentioned (anything by nintendo, Levi, Microsoft etc) have anything to do with practical and normal living needs?!?! Now, if this was against a supermarket or a foodgoods seller, then fine, but in this case i dont agree.
Firstly, its their product, why cant they decide how much they want to charge? The value is only that of what people are willing to pay, people stop paying and the product obviously isnt worth what they are asking.
Secondly, as i said before, its not a vital product. All of these things are luxuries, and definatly things we can live without.
Priorities people, want to go after a price fixer? Then go after the Pharmacuetical Industry who definatly fixes prices! That sort of battle would benifit more people than this.
The number is EUR 149 million.
Read the press release from the European Commission.
Some facts:
And so on and so on. You can find more facts about it at the rather appallingly designed Rip-off Britain website.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
It seems like it has more to do with the open trade policies within the EU than it does with Nintendo.
You're absolutely right. Unfortunately, it has lately become fashionable to hate corporations. Personally, I find it mind-boggling that someone can hate a corporation but NOT hate government for the same reasons. My government takes 55% of my income EVERY year. Compared to that, Nintendo isn't even a minor concern.
Mike van Lammeren
It will challenge your head, your brain, and your mind.
The Register is carrying another story here with evidence that Nintendo expected a far smaller fine - around 50M. An interesting read that'll make you think twice before publishing MSWord docs to all and sundry :-)
Try NetBSD... safe,straightforward,useful.
Obligatory link to The Expurgation of Maniac Mansion for the Nintendo Entertainment System
Behold, evil!
Belief is the currency of delusion.
What strikes me is that there is something of a double standard in play here. The EU makes no attempts to make sure that it costs the same amount to advertise a product in different EU markets, or that it costs the same amount to get a product on the shelves in each, but it does use fines such as this one to make sure that a producer can't charge different prices for the same item in different places.
As far as I can tell, this will tend to make profit margins necessarily higher in some EU markets than in others, with the result that either all markets will get more expensive, or that producers will stop selling in some markets.
In other words, if it costs Nintendo more to operate in the Germany than in the UK, and if they are prohibited by law from charging higher prices in Germany than in the UK, then their only options are a.) to not sell their products in Germany at all, or b.) to charge higher prices for their products in the UK.
If the goal of this legislation is to stiff the Brits or to reduce the number of products the Germans have to choose from, it would seem to be working quite well, but if it's goal is to make the product cheap everywhere, it's hard to see how it could possibly succeed.
No.
Nintendo were leaning on the retailers to ensure that anyone supplying to a cheaper country suddenly got their supply of Nintendo games cut off. There was no-one willing to do this. The second you did, you lost all rights to sell Nintendo stuff.
If people are unable to do so, then that is the case because EU laws/tarrifs/regulations/etc. are the problem.
Exactly the opposite. The EU has laws that enable people to do so and these laws have been used against Nintendo, who were trying to prevent it.
Cheers,
Ian
Let me just say, damn I wish I was in your tax bracket. And no I don't feel sorry for you at all. People need to pay taxes so we have things like roads and schools.
I hate monopolies, I love competition. Certain types of price fixing is a crime. Criminals suck. The gov't is not a bunch of criminals for taking your money. They are doing things that benefit society with that money. Ever drive on a public road?
You tax rate is prorably so high because your income is high and whatever country you live in was wise enopugh to institute some sort of progressive tax system. If you don't like having a gov't you should find a place where you can live among fellow anarchists. You can grow your own food and carry a gun everwhere you go, while watching you standard of living go to shit.
I personally believe that at some level of income, the tax rate for individuals should become 100%. No one person should have a billion dollars, it's impossible for a democaracy to exist when people do. The economy would still function just fine under this system, since indiviuals could still pool their money by creating corporations.
Life is too short to proofread.
The Ninentendo case is an example of price discrimination not price fixing.
Price discrimination is when a single producer charges different customes different prices. Price fixing is when different producers agree to sell to all customers for the same price.
What followes is some detail on each and then some argumentation for why the ethical case against price discrimination generally is weak, without adressing the Nintendo case particularly.
Price fixing is an instance of collusion, where ostensibly competing producers negotiate an agreement to restrict price competetion between themselves. That is, producers agree not to sell their product for below some specified amount. The purpose of the agreement is to increase sales profits by rasing sales prices. Note that such agreements are always accompanied by another agreement about how producers divide up the market. Sometimes producers carve up the market geographically. For example, "You sell in Michigan and I'll sell in Ohio." Sometimes producers carve up the market by number of sales. "You won't sell more than x billion barrels of oil and I won't either."
OPEC is the quintessential example of a price fixing organization. Price fixing is its sole and explicit purpose. (OPEC can do this because it is an organization of governments, and there exists no super-governmental body to place on governments the same rules by which those nations govern their citizens.)
Price discrimination, on the other hand, is a pricing strategy of a lone seller for raising profits on sales without organizing agreements with his competitors. For each buyer, the seller attempts to negotiate the maximum price that buyer will pay. For the seller, this stragy works to raise net sales income above what would be obtained with a one-price-for-all strategy.
The moral case against is price discrimination is pretty weak for these reasons:
-Because richer customers are willing to pay more, in practice price discimination amounts to giving poorer customers a break on price. It places the costs of production more heavely on those who can best afford them. If you look at Nintendo's pricing scheme, I would predict you find that Nintendo charged more in richer countries and less in poorer countries.
-Most people don't regard price discrimination as unethical. There are plenty of examples which demonstrate how this is cool with most people. Like Priceline's "Name your own price". Or the bazaar, where buyers and sellers haggle over prices, the buyer attempting to determine the lowest price at which the seller will part with a good and the seller trying to find the highest price which the buyer is willing to pay. There is no guarantee or even an expectation that such a system will result in the same price for each customer, and that's just cool with everyone.
-With progressive taxation, tax payers are assessed different fees according to their ability to pay. With price discrimination, buyers pay different fees according to their willingness to pay. Goverments make the "Different people pay different amounts" argument in the case of taxation. However, the argue against "different people pay different amounts" in the case of private sales. The reason for the contradictory approaches is that with taxation, goverment is as the recipient of tax revenues adopts the strategy which maximizes those revenues. In the case of corporate sales, they have little such insentive. My point here is not that one or the other is eithically correct, but that it is difficult to make the ethical case for one as you engage in the other.
With price discrimination, the rich lose out becasue sellers can exploit their willingness to pay more than the poor. Mario Monte stands for their interets here.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
EU cares about discrimination inside EU. All EU within one region code = no problem. Personally I would wish they did though. I can live with CSS but I really hate those region codes.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings