Nintendo Announces Second US Store, Opening 2025

"Teeming commercial hub of the city."

Open toilet is more like it. Bring a mask ... and not for Covid.

Have they seen San Fran-sh**-sco lately? This is a rather confusing choice to set up shop.

Nintendo needs to not do this!
San Fran is a really bad city!

I lived just outside of it and worked in it for two years.

Yeah, I lived in SF for years and it used to be my favorite city. It's a mess now. This seems like a really bad idea.

Doesn’t San Francisco and California have a smash and grab problem as well as a policy of no prosecution for theft of goods under a few hundred dollars?

Oh look all the people who have never been to SF are already here and commenting the talking points they get from Fox News. Shocking.

Looking forward to this store and there’s an obvious reason Nintendo chose SF, it will do very well.

YES!!!! Super excited. Haven’t been able to go to the NY store in years. Haven’t been to SF yet anyway. I am gonna have to visit both the theme park and the store during a vacation. Will have to start saving so I can go crazy.

I disagree. With San Fransico. Most of California, but especially San Fransico

Cool, the more shops the better. I can wait, but I would love to have a shop somewhere not too far away.

@bananamal I live 1 hour from where they are putting the store ( well depending on the time of day … if you know you know) and have worked in the city for the past 6 years and do have to regularly go to union square. I can confirm that this is an odd choice … several stores have closed in this area (it can appear to be a ghost town at times) and they do have issues with smash and grab robberies there. While I do enjoy working in the area , unfortunately some of the stories you do hear about the area are not that far off base. That being said the Apple Store in the area seems to do well and I am hopeful the area will be restored / businesses will come back. SF was able to clean up pretty well ( and quickly ) for the APEC summit last fall after all. Most of all, I am excited that if I want to go to a Nintendo store I know longer have to make a transfer at the sf or Oakland airport on the BART and endure a 5 plus hour flight.

Would be cool to finally see something open up in the U.K. Just saying.

Something tells me this store is only going to last a few years before it closes its doors, with how much San Francisco has gone downhill.
Curious that Nintendo of America shuttered their offices in the Bay Area, but apparently has no issues with opening up a store in San Francisco proper.

Eww why San Francisco? Why not in an actually cool city like Seattle?

That's nice, but when can we have a single store in the UK?

These stores are for marketing purposes, and their marketing team was based in SF before they closed that office. That's of course where Nintendo Minute was filmed. It will be interesting to hear the next news segment for Kit & Krysta's podcast. I don't see them going back to work for Nintendo, but I'm sure they'll use it as a backdrop for an episode or two.

Just logging in for the SF haters:

NA-NA-NA-NANA!! 👅

SF BAY AREA REPRESENT!
Thank you, Nintendo.

Wow. Didn't expect the Fox News contingent to show up so strongly in this comment section.

Nintendo will save San Francisco.

@bananamal
I lived in Pacifica, CA
I worked in both Daly City and San Fran.
I was there for close to two and a half years.

San Fran was nice but quickly turned to poopie!
NY, where I was born and lived for 20+ years has always been poopie.

@Tyranexx @Croctopus
I too am now in the... Great Plains? Mid-West?
I live in the Ozark Mountains in Missouri.

@bananamal I've been to San Fran and these people are being nice here lol

Also still no official Nintendo store on mainland Europe. Would be cool to have in Germany or France (or even here in the Netherlands). Ah well.. better for my wallet, I guess! 😂

Rampant theft will shut this store down I predict. On the other hand I do think the resident are getting fed up with the state of things. There may be big changes coming to the way the city is managed.

Wow! I thought there would be a few comments about the state of San Francisco! My first thought was viral videos of people stealing.

YES! Finally, I can go to the dang Nintendo store!! I almost never go down there but for Nintendo I’m more than happy to make the trek. And yeah, sf is kind of gross. But ny is too so idk what’s up with this double standard.

What a mistake. Literally any other city in any other state would of been a better move. This will be robbed until it is forced to close. Honestly they should of opened it in Orlando is a city that's actually under control and not covered in ***** and fentanyl zombies

Hey Nintendo want to do something interesting in the U.K that ain't crappy Pokémon? of course not you hate fun.

San Francisco but not London?! How does this make any sense?

Also, are they building the thing from scratch?! How does it take more than 7 months to open a shop... lol

worst place to put it is in frisco at this time due to high revolving door crime..

Damn this is even further than my most local store in NYC coming from the UK!

Nintendo are big and popular enough for stores in all major cities surely? London would be welcomed anyway.

When will we have shop in Germany , France , Belgium or Netherlands ?

I hope Nintendo hires extra security. Most businesses are moving away from San Fran because it's basically the shoplifting capital of the world. I wish them luck - they may need it.

Bad idea. Seattle area was a no brianer.

At the very least, this means an official Nintendo Store will be driving distance from me, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s the best part of the news! 😎 … I just wish them safety and good luck.

Seattle would be better in my flimsy opinion

I figured it would be in the West Coast since the first one is in NYC. I was hoping for Seattle or Portland so I could drive there but oh well. Looks like most of us agree that Seattle would have been a better choice.

San Francisco huh... well there's already 5000 other posts expressing what I was thinking, but yeah man not sure about that.

@TimeGuy
I'm not even from the US and have never been to Texas and somehow that was also my first thought. Don't even know why I'd be aware of Frisco as a city.

Welp I can see this going over really well

@bananamal Did you miss the part where a lot of us said we actually lived there? I lived in the Tender-Nob and the Mission District for years, so please miss me with your Fox News nonsense. Curious why NL didn't remove your comments for unconstructive and inappropriate trolling.

@scoot this is a very poor comment. have you been to the area at all lately? I am no fan of Fox News … and when I was first working in the area I thought that it was being overblown… but the first week I was there i had 3 instances of finding a certain thing on the ground that should be in toilets, 2 drug deals done in my proximity ( and in broad day light ) , 2 car break ins, and I won’t even mention some of the stuff I experience on BART. Also I feel I should mention that this stuff occurred in what are considered nicer parts of town. I won’t mention stuff I have seen working in the tenderloin. I had to admit to my wife, whom Fox News would be considered enemy number 1 , that they were pretty on point about some of the stuff. Listen I still like the area and the people i know from there are great, but that does not mean that attention should not be drawn to the situation occurring there. When I shared with my friend that they were putting it there, she had the same reaction… (we both frequent the area). I am hopeful , as a few others on this thread have alluded too, that this will help with revitalizing the area.

@Croctopus Also hoping for a Chicago location, since I live about 40 miles northwest of the city.

welp.

it is what it is

“…Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair…”. 🎵

Oof, why of all places San Francisco? The place is like a lawless zone. People can literally steal up to $900 worth of items and not get punished. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Not a very smart move Nintendo. I already feel bad for the people who are going to be working there..

I’m guessing they were offered attractive municipal real estate incentives relative to other locations under consideration. I don’t follow Fox News, Breitbart, etc., but am still well aware of the problems that downtown SF has been experiencing in recent years, including a struggling commercial real estate market. One would have to employ some pretty magical thinking to pretend that SF’s problems all just right-wing hate and exaggeration; the city can be a lot better than it is. Hopefully the new Nintendo store is successful and helps toward making the downtown a more attractive place to visit.

@Blue_Dread

have a significant population of Japanese descent as well.

Not sure the crime will really get to this store because who would want resold stolen Nintendo junk? But I don’t see this store succeeding. Politics aside, SF is the toilet of California now. It’s quite the shame I live 80 miles from there and I would totally visit the store if it weren’t in the worst city in this state.

LA would have been the obvious one I guess,
but I reckon Austin, Texas would be a good choice.

@scoot It's also on CNN, NYPost, Bloomberg, msnbc, etc.

Either way, Nintendo is smart. I think they know where to set up. Worst case scenario it gets robbed, then goes somewhere else.

@Crecca Don't be upset by it. Either it does really good, or they take it down after 6 months. It'll be the litmus test. We can see if does good or not. See if all the news have been making it up.

Maybe Nintendo still thinks the place looks like Toad Harbor.

Really glad to see so many based comments here. San Fran and Cali were so beautiful back in the day. But you get what you vote for!

@Cineologist This is the kind of quality commentating I scroll through NLife comment sections to find. A true needle in a haystack!

Enjoy being robbed on day 2.

@Ulysses,

Or just a different take on the situation, but on the whole people seem to feel SF is not the best choice, personally I am pretty much indifferent.

I am surprised this comment section is still open

@johnvboy Thankfully it was all in good fun. His comment gave me a hearty laugh, especially in the face of all the prior doom and gloom.

Now if I meant my comment seriously, I would have referred to @Li_Bae 's comment which I found to be the best comment of the section, nicely balanced and logistical 🥸

San Fransisco is a bad choice.That store will a hotspot for shoplifting.

Nintendo’s first ever physical piracy store.

Store gonna get looted fast lol. What a bad location choice.

@Don lol yep. There are YouTube videos of thieves just riding their bicycles into stores, grabbing just under the $$$ amount stuffing into backpacks, trash bags, etc and casually riding off.

@scoot No it’s just actual SF locals and people that work in the Bay Area and transit via BART that has their honest take of a once great city reduced to pollution, homeless, thieves, etc that even turns off the tourists.

No idea people in NL get their info from CNN that unironically think San Fran is a Sanctuary lol. Actual video footages and locals/people that work in area says otherwise.

I have never been to San Fran. But does have its issues right now (at least from what I can tell via telescope 3000 miles away).

Also for whatever worth, SF past or present has never been ‘alpha global’ market like NY.

Do wish luck.

As a Brit who has next to no working knowledge of city life in America this comment section has been illuminating. And troubling.

@locky-mavo hilarious 🤣

I was just in SF last month and it absolutely is as dreadful as people are saying. Then again people also dismiss when I talk about my week in downtown Seattle where human poop was about as regularly seen/smelled as the avian variety, and quickly discovered some streets have to be avoided because it's a gauntlet of people hassling pedestrians. But I guess I was actually abducted by Fox News and had those memories implanted.

@Aplos17 why would you think it's a lie? My brother lives in California I go there plenty. It's not lies or anything. People leave their trunks and windows down so people don't break them, people go into their cars to find a homeless druggie sleeping in there, rampant theft that is shutting down stores left and right, taxes that make it impossible to do business. Any smart business has already moved to Texas and Florida hell even pa would of been better

@Coalescence bro seriously all the comments being like you should of come to Seattle instead or some other place that is just as horribly managed as SF. Isn't Seattle where they pretty much held the cops hostage in their own station? Or set up their autonomous zones or whatever. The entirety of the West Coast is just awful and anyone saying otherwise lives there and voted out into that situation. They'll just move and say oh it wasn't like that when I lived there.

@Crecca One person's experience isn't all of the truth. I'm going to wait on this one. Nintendo usually keep a tight shift when it comes to long term investments. If it turns out it's a crappy location, I'm willing to see where it's going.

@Crecca San Francisco does have same major problems right now, but Seattle is fine. Your talking points about the city are several years out of date.

Like all major cities, Seattle has its issues - but it’s nothing like SF.

(I still get a laugh at all the people who think Seattle and Portland, among other cities, were essentially “burned to the ground” by rioters. Even at their worst, a vast majority of the areas of both cities were perfectly fine.

“The entirety of the West Coast is just awful”

Honestly, this statement is so ludicrous it’s hard to take seriously. And no, I don’t live there - but I have family in both California and Washington that I visit several times a year, and my work takes me to some of these uninhabitable cities on a regular basis. Turns out they’re fine. Seattle is still one of my favorite cities in the world - I’d happily move if I could afford to buy a home there.

@Crecca “Any smart business has already moved to Texas and Florida”

Except… it turns out that it’s harder to attract top talent to Texas and Florida - for both cultural and political reasons - and that many who move for the “lower” taxes often end up paying more in the long run (and getting less in return for them.)

(Also turns out that some cities in Texas and Florida are just as crime-ridden as those scary, scary California cities - but that’s not the point I guess.)

This isn’t really a defense of some of California’s dumber policies - but those who think of Texas or Florida as some sort of haven for businesses often end up being unpleasantly surprised by the reality.

There’s a lot more to say on the subject. About how repeatedly calling yourself “great for business” and “tough on crime” doesn’t necessarily mean the data backs you up. And about how media can have such a strong influence on shaping our perceptions (it’s pretty much a truism among some that the entirety of California, one of the largest and most diverse - geographically, culturally, and even politically - regions of the country is some sort of hellhole.) But since this is the Nintendo Life comments section I’ll drop the topic.

@Ulysses,

I know... all good fun, and no biggie of an issue either way, if Nintendo want to open a store, they can choose anywhere they want, it's their train set at the end of the day.

I am glad people on the west coast are getting a store. San Francisco is probably one of the worst choices for location. Hopefully, everything goes well. It's too bad both locations are pretty far from South Florida.

I hope they have a well staffed store security team.

Yeah... how long do you think this is going to last?

I wish they open one in London, that would be good!

@Crecca I've been there bro, it's a trash bin. But thats not what I'm saying. I'm saying that I'm willing to see a trash fire go up in flames. But then if it ends up as trash fire, they can swivel towards somewhere else. When Nintendo does something out of pocket, they usually have their reasons. They know the state of the world, I wonder why they would choose SF as a destination. They may know something we dont.

I guess if their NY store can sustain the rampant crime then San Francisco can?? Wouldn’t be my first choice though as a business owner.

@Aplos17 that could be true they could of made a deal with the state, it's the closest point to Japan even tho I don't really see why that's a selling point as Japan has plenty Nintendo stores. I just think it's a shame I wanted to live in California my entire childhood and my brother moved there and I went to visit him to look at schools and just felt like I was in an free range insane asylum. It's a shame we've gotten to the point that the only thing that can turn the state around is basically glassing the state halo style and rebuilding from the ashes.

Nintendo secured a prime location at the corner of Heroine Needle Way and Piles of Feces Avenue! Just remember to leave your car doors unlocked and your windows rolled down so the fine citizens who are entitled to up to $1000 of your property won't have to break any windows to get it.

Wish they could open one also in the Midwest, so it's not an 800-mile trip.

Man, I really wish one would open in like Florida or something. One on the east coast that’s not in a city like NYC