Nintendo: Quality the best deterrent against used games

Nintendo's Reggie Fils-Aime has pointed to game quality as the single best deterrent against the used game market.

Speaking to Polygon, Nintendo's North American president explained that the re-sale of games has the biggest impact on games made with less emphasis on originality: specifically, annualised sequels and "undifferentiated" genre fare.

Nintendo is protected against players monetising its products through the second-hand market because, "the replayability of our content is super strong."

"The consumer wants to keep playing Mario Kart. The consumer want to keep playing New Super Mario Bros. They want to keep playing Pikmin," Fils-Aime said. "So we see that the trade-in frequency on Nintendo content is much less than the industry average - much, much less.

"So for us, we have been able to step back and say that we are not taking any technological means to impact trade-in and we are confident that if we build great content, then the consumer will not want to trade in our games."

At present, the role that the used game market will play on the Xbox One and PlayStation 3 remains unclear. Microsoft and Sony have different policies regarding game sharing, though both are allowing publishers to place their own restrictions regarding the re-sale of their games.

However, Fils-Aime is optimistic about the future for consumers.

"The fact of the matter is, we will see what happens with publishers," he said, "but it seems to me that every major publisher has come and said we don't mind used games."