Nintendo's shift to digital|General Gaming Discussion|Forum|SNES HUB

I’m curious what everyone thinks of a recent trend I’ve been noticing with Nintendo.  Over the last few years, it seems that their “B tier” titles (Star Fox, Pikmin, Kid Icarus, etc.) are released in relatively small print runs.  Nintendo doesn’t seem to be reprinting these games once they’ve sold through their initial print run.  Instead, they’ve chosen to offer these through their eShop.  

I’m personally very disappointed by this.  The prices for most of these games quickly appreciates on the secondary market (look at Pikmin 3).  I understand why Nintendo would want to go this route, since they takes less risk by not reprinting their games and a digital sale has a much higher margin than a retail sale.  That said, I wonder if this is partially backfiring on them.  If a consumer buys a $90 copy of Pikmin 3 on the secondary market, that consumer will have less money to buy Nintendo products.  Nintendo’s published digital offerings also look unattractive compared to other publishers (even on their own store), since they rarely go on sale, even years after release.

Anyways, to summarize, this is nothing new for the gaming industry as a whole, though I am disappointed that Nintendo has embraced digital distribution so heavily (at the expense of retail distribution) given that their games always command a premium price.