Topic: The real genius of MK8's DLC on improving e-shop sales.

First off, I'd like to say I've put this in a separate topic from the MK8 DLC topic because I think it has more to do with the e-shop than the MK8 content.

Now as we know, Nintendo has announced the MK8 DLC available via e-shop for $7.99/$11.99 USD or £7/£11. Fantastic price for the content, a lot of people are going to buy it to extend the life of MK8, and Nintendo will hopefully make lots of money from it. But there's more to the pricing than meets the eye...

As you may or may not know, e-shop vouchers are available in increments of 5- $5, $10, $15, or $20, or the same in pounds- I'm even guessing it's the same with euros. Say you have never been on the e-shop before, so you buy a voucher from a shop or from the store. Say £15. Already you have paid Nintendo £15. You redeem £11 for the DLC, and you have £4 left. You have choices: you can either just leave it on their and never spend it- Nintendo keep your £4. Or you can buy a game for under £4 which is possible but will be a smaller, older game. Or you can buy yourself another voucher and buy something better like Shovel Knight or Dr Mario or whatever. Anything you decide to do, Nintendo has made you go on the e-shop and look around at all the other lovely things you could download.

This is the reason the MK8 DLC is not £10 or £15, as it leaves you with money left over on your account to spend. It's also the reason why there isn't parity between the US and UK prices, as it's just over 10. At the end of the day you're still getting a great deal for the price even at £15 or $15, and you have some money to go shopping on the e-shop. I think this is fantastic marketing by Nintendo, as it makes people more aware of the e-shop.

This logic may work for the US but in the UK the minimum eshop voucher amount is £15.

lol as started here UK eshop cards are £15, £25 and £30 they'd of had the same situation happen by OP logic if MK8 DLC had been £9.

If that was a reason it sure wasn't a stupid one.
It's the case for about everything available in the eShop though.

This will not work with people that use prepaid cards(like me).I can put the right amount of money so when i buy something there'isnt anymore left.

I don't think its that genius if I didn't have a card (i.e I was still was a child) I would have borrowed my parents card and paid them. (Was possible with persuasion).

For myself maybe I will get a £15 card but only because of the about 10% off from cdkeys.com - anything more for the remainder I will just pay the difference by card.

People know the eshop exists if they don't want to use it trying to manipulate them to do is not a good thing. (Other than on quality of product like say a demo that is that good that everybody wants to get it immediately).

Don't most people just use their credit/debit cards tho?

Credit card doesn't solve the problem, I'm only able to upload €10, €20, €60, or €130 to my account. Nevertheless, you can always buy a classic NES game for a few bucks; or wait until another paid DLC comes along. It's not a huge problem.

No.

Yep, I personally use the eshop cards since I get a discount on them at my job.

My take though is that Nintendo has been good and smart with all the DLC they've done for games. I'm a bit suprised that WII Fit U and Nintendoland didn't have add-on content. But everything else has been low cost, medium cost, or free.

Will be interesting to see how Nintendo approaches patches and DLC for Smash Bros, Xenoblade X, and Splatton.

You can just select exact amount only. (At least I can on both 3DS and Wii U).

NSMB2 is about as bad as any. What makes it worse is all the good levels are in the DLC.

Don't upload extra money then.

I'd figure that they were smart enough to make that possible, but apparantly I haven't figured out how yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYOuzEDShEk

If you watch this video; at 00:42 ''Add Funds with a Credit Card'' is selected, then you are given the option to select one of 4 different sums of money; in this case $10, $20, $50, and $100. If anyone knows how to manually enter an amount, I'd be glad to hear about that.