The Nintendo Wii and DS are undoubtedly this generation’s success stories where sales figures are concerned, and Nintendo executives are laughing their way to the bank with their new hobby – printing money. Unfortunately, the bleak global economic outlook next year might dent Nintendo’s revenues (coupled with the rising yen to hurt their export competitiveness), which is why this creative company has already thought up of another way to help them through this rough patch for everyone. The next obvious step would be to introduce downloadable video in Japan via Japanese ad agency Dentsu Inc.

This is a surprise considering Nintendo’s chief rivals in the video game department, Microsoft and Sony, have previously made strong pushes into the video world with their superior hardware, although Sony focuses more on physical media like Blu-ray while Microsoft concentrates on downloadable content for its Xbox 360. As for Nintendo, it will be interesting to see what kind of downloadable content will be made available to their huge user base, and whether this fever will spill over to the rest of the world. Remember their push with selling popular cartoons on GBA cartridges years ago? That effort was a flop, and it remains to be seen whether Nintendo will do any better this time round. Perhaps physical media is not the way of the future, and one thing’s for sure – those who are used to paying nothing for videos online (think Torrents) will definitely cringe and forking out a comparable sum for digital downloads. Somehow, having something to hold in one’s hands at a certain price is much more satisfying instead.

Source: ArsTechnica

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