Topic: An Amazing Answer from Nintendo Customer Service

I recently wrote to the italian Nintendo customer service asking why on earth the retail version of a two months old games is so hard to find; I'm talking about Captain Toad, which is not available even on the biggest italian online shops. This was the answer:
"Dear customer, we are sorry but unfortunately we do not have the option to indicate you a specific point of sale. We remind you , however, that Nintendo products are sold in specialty stores, supermarkets and hypermarkets specialized in electronics.
Sorry can not help you further.
Kind regards, Nintendo Customer Service"
Thank you, Nintendo Customer Service! Problem solved!

Have you tried an online retailer? I don't even remember the last game I bought in an actual store. Something early in the PS3 life, I guess.

Yes I did, but it's not available. My only options now are eShop and £$%& Amazon. And this sucks: eShop means paying full price for installing a game in an hard disk that Nintendo forgot to put in their console and without a proper account system, Amazon means giving money to a company that kills little retailers with its £$%& policy. Maybe I should spend those 40 euros for a copy of the new Kirby... oh, right, we don't even have a release date here in EU.

@andreoni79 Have a look here http://www.cdkeys.com/nintendo/wii-u-games They sell download codes at a very resonable rate.It's an US retailer but these codes are for the PAL region.At these prices I think I will be getting all the new releases from here now.

I would be very wary of purchasing download keys from unofficial sources. You can never know where they come from and you run the risk of them being illegitimate and possibly losing your purchases.

@andreoni79 Looks like more of a problem of you not wanting to play ball with retailers. If a store doesn't want to stock Nintendo products because they don't sell, that's not Nintendo's fault (well... it is, but that's a different issue). Check specialty shops like Nintendo suggested or use Amazon.

Retailers would like to sell Captain Toad, but there's a shortage of copies. Captain Toad has been released on January 9th here in Italy and after two weeks it just disappeared. I just don't think it's normal. And Captain Toad was the first selling game last month as you can see here, http://www.ibs.it/vg/100/100pge.asp?g=12 but now it's out of stock. I only hope this is not a way to force us to go digital. I usually buy Nintendo games at Day One but January means taxes, and than there's the rent, bills etc. and this time I had to wait too much and this is the result

@andreoni79 puoi comprarlo su Amazon Italia e te lo spediscono a casa http://www.amazon.it/Nintendo-Captain-Toad-Treasure-Tracker/d...
(I'm italian)

I was sceptical too but I've checked them out and they seem to be genuine.Game in the UK are selling their download codes for much the same price,just a couple of dollars more expensive but still quite a bit cheaper than the Eshop and comparable with Amazons prices.

I wonder what's sold in a hypermarket?

Hyper Potions for pokemon, Hypers to treat sadness. You know, the usual

So you expected Nintendo to give you a different answer to everyone else? The game is available as you said on the eshop. You're preventing yourself from buying this game.

Here, you can have my copy then.

I expect Nintendo to print copies of their games. Is this so strange?

No, but you shouldn't expect them to just pull them out of their magic hats. It might not be to your liking (or mine, for that matter), but Nintendo tends to underproduce the first shipping and then produce more based on demand from retailers, NOT (potential) players. That means, if the demand from italian retailers is sufficient, Nintendo will ship more copies to them as they're ordered. Until then, you can either try and get a copy of Captain Toad from a smaller retailer who offers stuff on amazon (y'know, they don't do this alone), or you make a reservation at a retailer to have them contact you as soon as they get another copy of the game.

I was having trouble finding Captain Toad as well (in the Netherlands). The stores where I usually go to had to send them back to Nintendo, because they bought to many copies. Now, they have none!? Good job stores! Getting it online wasn't a problem though.

Everything basically. Its like those walmart supercenters...and stores that are bigger.