Nintendo Ends Partnership With Austrian Distributor Stadlbauer, Confirms Plans For Regional Office

I live in Austria, and if that move at least means that I can buy Nintendo eShop cards without driving a few hours, I'd be happy. If it also means that Nintendo is able to explain to everybody what the Wii U is so I don't have to every time I talk about games, even better. Maybe they will even do local offers or something, but we'll see.

Austria has an incredible amount of nice girls, just saying.

This just in: Nintendo abandons germany, avoids the silly censorship laws and finally releases a kirby hack n slash with blood, gore, realistic brown and green and flying limbs. Also, kirby uses adult language, voiced by Ironside. And has killcams, of course.

Instant end to the nintendo sales articles!

Now they just need to do this in Scandinavia...

Anyone else thought it said Australia?

nope

You'd think they'd concentrate on a bigger market like south america, china or scandanavia? Austria seems like a random choice

I know I'm flogging a dead horse, with this: there are few deader horses than Nintendo's distributor in South Africa. It would be great if they could do something to keep their house in order down here.

Ahhh, so hoping that Nintendo will wake up in Europe and do the same to Nordic countries also. We need to get rid off Bergsala AB.

Bring on Nintendo Nordic. Don't care if the main hq for that would be in Stockholm, Oslo, Copenhagen or Helsinki. It just needs to happen.

Or move the Nordic countries Nintendo distribution under the UK.

That Photo is realy nice!

This sounds mostly irrelevant, but as an American living in Austria, and as a Nintendo fan, this is great news! The previous arrangement with Stadlbauer was lacking, repair service was nonexistent, and there was no access to Club Nintendo, so now I can finally claim all those points! Maybe now I can go get some e-shop cards!

@Volmun That's Hallstatt. It's gorgeous, but quite the tourist trap in the summer.

This scared me for a minute when I thought I saw "Nintendo ends partnership with Australian distributor" (although it wouldn't surprise me.) I really need to stop misreading Austria all the time...

@erv
There are no "silly censorship laws" in Germany. People who claim otherwise have no clue what they are talking about or how the German youth protection law works. If a video game will be released censored in Germany, it's because the distributor decided to censor it to reach a wider audience and not because an uncensored version would be forbidden to release. So it's the choice of the publisher and nothing some mysterious German law dictates them to do.
This being said- it doesn't even affect other European markets, so I seriously don't understand why people keep debating this over and over, without even bothering to actually do some research on that matter.

Well, I do hope that this means Nintendo has realised they are ignoring a few European countries. Nintendo of Europe is a silly name, considering it's not for Europeans, but for selected countries in Europe only. Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland is left out. I don't live in Austria, but it's a good sign they care about the Austrian marked. Maybe they'll care about the entire Europe in a few years.

@speedreeder: Actually I was quite satisfied with Stadlbauer's repair services. A friend of mine even got his account back after his 3DS was stolen.

I was a part of the Austrian Nintendo club. Yes, they charged 5€ per year, but they offered really cool community events and contests were your chances of winning were pretty high. I'm sure I got way more than those 5€ back. And they had a real nice and friendly forum! I really only missed the Stars catalog which Stadlbauer only couldn't do because they had issues with Nintendo Europe over it.

Too bad this era is over now, but I hope we are FINALLY allowed to take part in german contests. It really sucks that even after June 2013, were NoE took over, the terms of service still list only Germans can partake... even though I can order from the Stars Catalogue!

Nintendo of Europe has always depended on local subsidiaries / partners to handle distribution & marketing. These relationships often go back a good number of years but i think they are currently reviewing all their local operations. People have gotten a bit complacent perhaps and it won't hurt to shake things up a little.

I just realized that the same thing happened to Germany's southern neighbor a while ago. For decades, Waldmeier AG was responsible for our local distribution and support, but now we finally have a legit Nintendo Switzerland in Dättwil, Baden. Hooray for Club Nintendo points!

This is great news. Stadlbauer might have done a good job like 15 years ago, but I felt they were getting lazier and lazier. I think until Nintendo took over nintendo.at they were still showing the Wii, while the Wii U was out for months.

@Splashman You know Austria is "Germany's southern neighbor" too, I hope? Your comment reads differently

@HarryK Austria is more south-eastern, but at least we're both red-white

@awesomeunclet oh right lol yeah the pritty places often are like that

Wow Austria looks beautiful. Is that really Austria? If so I need to visit one of these days.

Oh. Ok. Where's the south america office? I'm pretty sure that's a much more important market, Ninty...

I always thought there were three of them: Nintendo of America, Nintendo of Europe, and Nintendo of Japan o_O.

We need Nintendo of Latin America.

@Splashman slowly but steady the service by NintendoCH gets better than Waldmeiers service in the last few years.

Shamless plug, but visit the JapAniManga Night in Winterthur this May! Lot's of Nintendo Goodness!

@Ezekiel It's actually called Nintendo Co. Ltd in Japan (short NCL) and not Nintendo of Japan.

Curiously, Nintendo in Switzerland is just called Nintendo Switzerland, no 'of' in the name. May the same happen to Austria.

@ZueriHB oh yeah, I'll try to make it this year. I was last there 2011, helped finish Rockman 2.
In the meantime, shameless plug for my museum in Basel: https://www.facebook.com/CMuseumGB

@Splashman That was you?
I was Sailor Pluto in '11, remember me?

@ZueriHB I think so, but maybe we can take this conversation elsewhere? ^^'

@Bensei I had a broken shoulder button on my 3DS (by then off warranty) , and after talking to the people at Stadlbauer, I realized that it was going to take 2 months and cost around €100,- to make a repair. They needed to do everything by snail mail. It just seemed like a really slow and outdated way to do customer service.

@speedreeder: Oh my, that really sounds terrible. But a friend of mine also had a broken shoulder button. No more warranty for a few, but they repaired for free anyways. They had snailmail though, but he didn't complain about it so I guess it was fast enough for his taste.