Nintendo EU Price Fixing Fine is Reduced

They still have £107,000,000 left to pay, however

by Damien McFerran Fri 1st May 2009

Proof that the EU Commission has a heart?

Back in 2002 it was revealed that during the 1990s Nintendo's European operation had been colluding with retailers to keep the price of its software and hardware artificially high.

Such naughty-type action was brought to the attention of the European Commission and Nintendo was promptly slapped with a whopping £134,000,000 ($199,000,000) fine.

However, that figure has now been reduced to the tune of £27,000,000 because Nintendo co-operated with the investigation. One of the main retailers involved in the scandal - the now-defunct John Menzies chain - was given a similar reduction back when the case was originally brought to court.

The fine remains the biggest ever dished out by the EU's fair competition authority.

[source mcvuk.com]

Damien has been writing professionally about tech and video games since 2007 and oversees all of Hookshot Media's sites from an editorial perspective. He's also the editor of Time Extension, the network's newest site, which – paradoxically – is all about gaming's past glories.

1
Big_A2
Fri 1st May 2009

Damn straight. PAL regions have had to cope with higher prices for years, even to the present day. However, looking back PAL issues at the time, prices should've been the least of our concern....

2
Terra
Fri 1st May 2009

Never heard about that before, but I'm glad they got such a huge fine for it. They can use the extra money made to pay for it. Honestly, that's just unfair to us, I never thought Nintendo would still us those kind of tactics.

3
CowLaunch
Fri 1st May 2009

Take that Nintendo, you don't mess with the EU, unless you are the following: USA, China, India, Russia, Brazil, any country with a military with over 10 people in it, evil dictators, oil companies, the IMF...

4
Starwolf_UK
Fri 1st May 2009

So I guess there was some truth to the story last year saying Nintendo were contesting the price fixing. But like anything in law calling it "unfair and disgusting" won't get you anywhere, you have to find technicalities to clutch onto.

This is why Nintendo doesn't set RRP for thier goods anymore though at the end of the day there is only so much control a retailer can have before losing money.