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Nintendo Puts Business In Brazil On Hiatus

Posted by Soulskill on from the big-market-to-leave dept.

jones_supa writes: Nintendo has announced that it will end distribution of its consoles and games in Brazil. In a statement, Nintendo attributed the move to high import duties, which makes doing feasible business difficult. The company could avoid those duties with a local manufacturing operation, but has chosen not to establish one, presumably for the costs involved. In a statement e-mailed to Polygon, Nintendo of America said that the company's distributor for Latin America would no longer send products to Brazil, but it would continue to distribute Nintendo goods to other parts of South America. Nintendo will also keep monitoring the evolution of the business environment in Brazil and evaluate how to best serve Brazilian customers in the future.

3 of 111 comments (clear)

  1. Brazil has long had a very protectionist by Crashmarik · · Score: 5, Informative

    Environment for electronics and just about anything else. http://www.insidesources.com/c... . The problem is this doesn't serve them well. Trying to recreate the rest of the worlds industries internally just insures they have many second rate products, or have to pay hefty premiums for the tools they need to get things done. Really surprising after all these years they haven't tried to emulate more successful models, ala Japan, Singapore or Taiwan and encourage their industries to pursue ventures where they can have a competitive advantage.

    1. Re:Brazil has long had a very protectionist by Crashmarik · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I was thinking of a similar experiment -- if a company refuses to sell a product in your country, then it loses all copyright / trademark / patent protection. Locals would then be free to open up shop and start making the hardware or copying the software. I'm not sure if this would work, but I'd be interested in seeing the result nonetheless.

      Ok let me get this straight.

      1. Put into place a law that lets you steal the patents of products not being sold in your country
      2. Raise Tariffs on said products to the point they can't be sold
      3. ....
      4. Hope your military is sufficient to deter retaliation from the countries you have been robbing ?

      Now admittedly a military response maybe a little much. At the very least you can certainly expect the other nations to go after your assets abroad, pursue economic retaliation, hell they could issues letters of mark and reprisal against your merchant shipping.
       

  2. Re:customers should get pissed at their government by RogueyWon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Agreed it's moronic. But this is Nintendo we're talking about. Region locking isn't about the money; it's about a combination of their messed-up corporate structure (the various international companies are only loosely integrated) and nasty control-freakery. They have a long history of liking to say "title X does not fit with our irrationally conceived stereotype of region Y, so we won't release it there, or will cut it to hell first". Region locking is one of the tools they use for that.

    The whole "region locking for differential pricing" thing at least had a simple motive behind it ("more money"), but it doesn't work all that well (markets where you need to sell cheap tend to have too much piracy to be worth it anyway). Most people who region lock for that reason are moving away from it now (Sony and MS have ditched it entirely).