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..."

Comments

$143 million dollars?

[Anonymous Coward]

All they have to do is make a Pokemon game, and then paint it 4 different colors.

Re:$143 million dollars?

[Directrix1]

Lets see, they just lost $143 million dollars? So now, is this going to make them drop the prices in the other countries or raise the prices in the countries that were getting the games at good rates. I wonder.

Do you think upon hearing the verdict....

[nooboob]

....the president of Nintendo flew up into the air and coins exploded from his body?

Nintendo never changes

[pheph]

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.

Re:Nintendo never changes

[Anonvmous Coward]

Is that what happens when you register stuff? If I had known that I wouldn't have made a 'frrpbpb' noise and tossed all those cards away!

Re:Nintendo never changes

[punkass]

Wow, in the time it took you to probably type that snide comment, I found this. Did you register your NES decks, and did you purchase them between June 1, 1988 and December 31, 1990?

Good for them

[Raul654]

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.

Re:Good for them

[f97tosc]

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.

If the protesters around IMF had their way, there would be much more trade barriers between countries, making it much easier for corporations such as Nintendo to set different prices in different regions.

Good for the Europeans, bout damn time someone smacked those companies down, even if it is one with good Karma like nintendo.

Hum... so if the market is not very competitive you propose knocking down the companies. I think the opposite - what is needed is more companies. And, this is exactly what has happened in the video game market. With three competing systems it is probably very difficult for Nintendo to rig prices, not because EU bureaucrats tell them not to, but because they would lose their business.

Tor

Re:Good for them

[tswinzig]

Turn on the news

There's your first problem... you watch 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.

Bad news sells.

Of course you don't hear about the plethora of companies that do good things, act humanely, have scruples, etc... they do exist, and I'd wager they outnumber the enrons of the world.

Bad news sells.

Re:Good for them

[pyrros]

and the EU isn't even democratically elected!

ok, I'll bite.

The EU is run by five institutions, each playing a specific role:

* European Parliament (elected by the peoples of the Member States);
* Council of the Union (composed of the governments of the Member States);
* European Commission (driving force and executive body);
* Court of Justice (compliance with the law);
* Court of Auditors (sound and lawful management of the EU budget).

I trust that you'll believe me if I told you that the goverments of the member states are democratically elected.

The comission "has a college of 20 members. The President, the two Vice-Presidents and the 17 other Members of the Commission are chosen for their general competence, and all present guarantees of independence. They have all held political positions in their countries of origin, often at ministerial level.

The Commission is reappointed every five years, within six months of the elections to the European Parliament. This interval gives the new Parliament time to approve the Commission President proposed by the Member States, before the President designate constitutes his future team, in collaboration with the governments of the Member States. Parliament then gives its opinion on the entire college through a process of approval. Once accepted by the Parliament, the new Commission can officially start work the following January. "

That's ok for me, so let's go on to the Court
The judges and the advocates-general are appointed by joint agreement of the governments of the Member States for a renewable term of six years, with partial reappointment every three years. These are members of the highest national judiciary or jurisconsults of recognised competence presenting all the guarantees of independence.

Again, it sounds good to me

Finally, The Court of Auditors comprises 15 members appointed by the Council for a renewable term of six years, ruling unanimously after consultation with the European Parliament.

So the main bodies of the EU are either elected by the people or appointed by elected officials. I really don't see what your problem is.

It has also been reported...

[cornjchob]

...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."

So...

[elphkotm]

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*

Re:So...

[NineNine]

No, what they were doing is telling their *distributors* what they could sell 'em for. The thing is, at least with real merchandise (as opposed to say, software), when you buy something, you own it, and can sell it for whatever you'd like to sell it for.

Re:So...

[mccalli]

If Nintendo sells units for more money in a country with less demand, it's illegal?

Not what the ruling's about. The ruling isn't about price per se, it's about controlling the distribution.

What Nintendo were doing was selling a game for x in the UK, and the same game for x+5 in, say, France. Perfectly legal.

The trouble is that they were then trying to prevent French consumers from buying in Britain and importing directly into France. Now, the EU is an internal free-trade area, so controlling imports between member states is a big no-no.

That's the case. Not the price as such, but the control of distribution across member state boundaries.

Cheers,
Ian

I wonder when...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Trickle-down effect

[ohboy-sleep]

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.

Nintendo's reaction:

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

So What?

[4of12]

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.

Sounds like DVD region encoding to me...

[squarooticus]

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

Re:Basic rights

[lamz]

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.

Re:No surprise

[Sentry21]

While I know that prices in the UK are usually high, the figures quoted are irrelevant for a simple reason: if you're going to compare, compare against one country, and take things into account. The UK taxes cigarettes far more than most countries do (as I recall) - are taxes an issue? Germany is famous for its beer - is the beer in both situations made by the same company, so that you're having a fair comparison of products? If so, what about shipping costs and so on?

Even here in Canada, you can get a pre-cooked shrimp ring for about $9.99 in BC, $8.99 in Saskatchewan, and $4.99 in New Brunswick, all the same brand. You can also get $10 shrimp rings in New Brunswick from more widely known (i.e. larger, better) brands. Is this because people in BC get 'screwed', or because it costs a lot of money to ship refrigerated shrimp ten thousand kilometers?

If you're going to compare, you have to take more factors than just the price into account - local economy, shipping, VAT, local taxes, and so on. Is the US getting screwed because a BK Whopper costs more there than here? No, we just have cheaper beef, and a lower (but stronger) economy, so prices are less. It's good sense, and sensible economics.

--Dan