Topic: Broken game DIsc, digital download?

Hi. my 5 year old niece tried to take my Super Mario 3D disc out of the case today not realizing she had to press the button in the middle to release, so of course she snapped the disc down the middle...does nintendo allow you a digital download to replace a disc you broke? probably not but i figured id ask, thanks!

ah, ok i figured that thank you for the response. i had already played through Super Mario 3D so thankfully i didnt miss getting to play it before the disc break haha.

Call Nintendo. Sometimes they can work with you. I know in the old days within a period of time you could if you got a broken game cart mail it to them and with a fee included they'd send back another. They may do it with the disc.

Yes, check with Nintendo. If it's SM3DW, it's a game that's less than a year.

I just called Nintendo and told them I accidental smashed all my Wii U games with a hammer and they are sending me free replacements!

My guess? Nintendo will tell you 'buy a new copy and take better care of your stuff'.

The Swedish distributor is usually better than that, at least. Don't know about NoA or NoE policies, though.

I said nothing about free replacements, more like a replacement/exchange copy for half the price or something like that.

I would be surprised if they won't replace the media for a nominal cost. They advertise themselves as family friendly but cheap out by using optical disks instead of 3DS style cartridges when there is no good reason to.

Aside from the fact that discs are a lot cheaper to make and can hold more data? No good reason indeed?

Not that much cheaper. 1$ instead of 5$ (5$ will get a 32GB which is bigger than the Wii U disks can hold most games are less).

Penny pinching like that makes the disks totally inferior to the downloads which shouldn't be acceptable - poor user experience.

(The figures are based on teardown's and bill of materials for 2nd tier tablet makers - Apple and Samsung etc get it even cheaper and they don't even need that quality or even to write to it).

Penny pinching? Keep in mind that $4 can add up when you mass manufacture the games.

(The figures are based on teardown's and bill of materials for 2nd tier tablet makers - Apple and Samsung etc get it even cheaper and they don't even need that quality or even to write to it).

Meh. Estimates are nothing but estimates. It's really hard to say what Nintendo saves by using discs. However, do note that the Nintendo 64 failed mainly because it used a cartridge instead of a disc.

That's a 500% increase... Doesn't get more expensive than that.

The DS & 3DS is not that type of cartridge that the N64 used. (GBA was).

That information is from a source that gives the part number and has checked the commercial rate to buy that chip it is not really just a guess.

Superior product always desirable and always worth paying for. (The whole justification for console games costing more than PC games was the cartridge cost - it is miles still less than the modern difference even just using RRP's for the exact same game).

Nah, I'm through with blowing cartridges every time they don't work

Where is your argument even going? I don't think it's as big of a deal as you're putting it. Kids need to learn how to handle discs since they are still commonly used anyway (CDs, DVDs, games, etc.)

Ya, but if they want to use a higher GB capacity, it would cost even more. The disc versions usually aren't even inferior to the HDD versions, depending on the drive and stuff. The only problem I've seen on Wii U, between disc and HDD, is that 3rd parties were having problems running games off of a disc, because the original Xbox 360 version read from the HDD, so they had to relocate that data read to the disc drive in another go, instead, because it was easiest. That doesn't really represent the entire situation, because that only happened for some 7th gen ports that doesn't represent anything to do with the discs or the drive, but how the data was coded in that specific situation.

Consumers won't gain much, if anything, from having cartridges. It makes more sense to go HDD than try and get a cartridge type format.

@unrandomsam is making very reasonable points here. I don't see what the problem is.

There is no valid reason why Nintendo would choose to use a cheaper disc based format over a more expensive physical cartridge that would either cut into their profit margins or increase the end cost for consumers.

How could anyone even question this? It makes perfect sense.

Anyway, back to topic, just call Nintendo and see what they say. There really is no guarantee as to whether they'll be willing to do it or not. Just keep in mind that they have no obligation to do this

That's what Nintendo thought when they developed the Nintendo 64, going with cartridges instead of discs. What happened? It was harder for developers to make games for and to port to and from other consoles, and games were more expensive for consumers, dissuading publishers to make games for it (e.g. Final Fantasy 7 which ended up being made for the PS1), and for consumers to buy games for it. Nintendo ended up losing ground in the console market. The PS1 outsold the Nintendo 64 102.49 million to 32.93 million (over three times the sales).

With your price of 500% above the current price, a $60 game would cost $300. No one would buy a game for that price against $60. Even if it 150% of the current price, $90 is still extensively more than $60, and even more so after you buy 5 or so games.