Nintendo and Amazon have finally buried the hatchet and are once again partners. The two giants have been pretty cold with each other since 2012 for undisclosed reason or reasons. But before the cold war, Amazon has been distributing Nintendo products before the abrupt stoppage in 2012.
According to the reports, Nintendo and Amazon have officially announced that they will take off from where the two left in 2012. That being said, Amazon will now offer 61 Nintendo game titles (digital download codes) for the Wii U and the 3DS handled game consoles.
What melted the cold relationship is when Amazon began to offer Nintendo games for the 3DS earlier this year, but all hostility dissolved when the two industry mammoth released the 61 titles for the Wii U games. On the other side of the fence, although the rekindled partnership is a good sign for the two companies, experts are claiming that it won't majorly impact the status of the two organizations most especially Amazon.
Based on an Analyst's anecdote, Amazon is a big player in the industry but is not the top player, same as with Nintendo. The analyst added that although the partnership is a positive sign for the two organizations, it won't be a game changer for them. Another analyst projected that Gamestop, Wal-Mart, and Best Buy are the major players in the retail industry and are, in fact, bigger than Amazon and the digital download is but a tiny spot, in the market, not to mention the limited numbers of core players, who still prefers the physical disk.
But, in Amazon's defense, based on the numbers and surveys, most specially during the holiday seasons, Gamestop and Amazon were the only retail stores who have yet to post a negative number on the market share. The digital download is nothing new for Nintendo players, it is always available in their eShop, but Amazon's digital download model is more reliable, efficient, and user friendly, compared to Nintendo's. Some experts are seeing the move as a win-win for both Amazon and Nintendo.