Headlines - Nintendo appeal against price-fixing fine

[HEXUS]

Nintendo contest a £92.1m fine it was given for price-fixing its products.

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[Hicks12]

how come nintendo always get fined and not the likes of microsoft and sony? pretty much every company has pathetic pricing in the eu when compared to the US, its better for me to buy call of duty 4 from america(amazon.com) for pc @ $30 than it is here from amazon at £30, thats a joke as even import tax cant cost that much.
**** happens and its up to the people to justify the cost, not like you need games to live and will the people get there money back? hell no, so whats the point.

[beanbandit]

how come nintendo always get fined and not the likes of microsoft and sony? pretty much every company has pathetic pricing in the eu when compared to the US, its better for me to buy call of duty 4 from america(amazon.com) for pc @ $30 than it is here from amazon at £30, thats a joke as even import tax cant cost that much.
**** happens and its up to the people to justify the cost, not like you need games to live and will the people get there money back? hell no, so whats the point.

This has nothing to do with the difference in price between the US & Euroland. The EU don't set the prices, what they do is make sure that prices across its member states are not harshly inflated, 65% increase is a bit of a joke tbh, so Nintendo got what they deserved. What amazes me is how long its taken the big N to appeal against this fine, 6 years, what a joke.

[s_kinton]

Six years and they still haven't paid up...what a joke. Either fine someone and make them pay or dont bother, six years far too long. Litle things like these just consolidate peoples views that the judicial systems in use in the UK and EU are poor.

[Lanky123]

From the company that openly boasted that they made a profit on every Wii sold from launch, and that has licences to print money such as pokemon and mario, that's not too impressive. Doesn't the EU have something it can actually do to make Nintendo pay up?

[Spud1]

I imagine there is going to be interest on that fine - so, the longer they wait the more money the EU will get out of them =)

Plus from Nintendos POV if they think they have a case (which from a business point of view they do..imo you should be able to charge whatever you like for your products, and vary that accross the world) then it makes sense to try and fight it. If they win they won't have to pay a penny and will likely have their legal bills paid for. £92.1m is a heck of a lot of money, regardless of the size of your business, and well worth fighting over.

From a consumer POV I don't like this whole price inflating business at all - but thats because I live in the UK where our prices are higher than say the USA..As above though just because I don't particularly like it doesn't mean its wrong. It's almost as bad as the EU's anti competition business with Microsoft..that ruling is just so incredibly wrong for lots of reasons, but I won't get into that here

[smg1982]

where to begin?

first, to whoever posted the question as to why Nintendo gets fined but microsoft and sony do not, you should come out from under your rock and take note of the more than 1.5 billion euros microsoft has been fined by the commission in the last 4 years. sony, too, has been fined several times, including very recently regarding price fixing in the video tape market.

second, as to why it has taken nintendo so long to appeal, it's really not their fault. it is because the judicial system in the EU (well, everywhere really) is exceedingly slow. Nintendo appealed very quickly after the initail decision to the court of first instance, which finally got around to issuing its judgment about two months ago. nintendo then appealed to the ECJ. nothing more and nothing less. this is exactly how it works for every competition case in the EU (see the Microsoft case which, at present count, has lasted over ten years and is still going strong). Also, to the person who complained that nintendo, as a big corporation, is getting special treatment: this is exactly what would happen if you got fined by a court. you would have every right to appeal, and then appeal again.

third, interest is being racked up on the initial fine, so nintendo, once it does pay (and it almost certainly will have to pay the total fine), will pay an amount that is commensurate with the delay. Actually, i'm not sure about this particular case, but frequently the company will have to put the money in escrow pending the appeal, so nintendo effectively would have paid the fine, just not directly to the EU, at the time of the initial decision.

fourth, the EU does not exactly regulate the price differences between different Member States. If there is a large difference in prices because of genuinely different market conditions in the different countries, then that is fine. it becomes problematic when companies take steps (such as prohibiting their distributors from selling amongst each other) to keep markets divided so as to be able to charge supracompetitive prices in one market without imports of their own products from another market forcing the prices down. also, the 65% difference that everyone quotes between UK and Germany actually takes into account huge differences in tax and levy payments between the UK and Germany. The actual difference net of taxes and copyright levies would be closer to 25-30% i believe, which is actually a pretty minor difference relative to other consumer products.

Finally, as to the price difference between the EU and the states, there are many things which go into this, not least of which is the giant difference between sales tax in the US (0-10% with no additional copyright levies, and generally 0% for cross-border transactions such as when you purchase it over the internet) and VAT in europe (5-25%, with additional copyright levies ranging from 0-25%). In addition, VAT is charged on a far larger number of products and services in the EU than sales tax is in the US. Thus, all of the inputs which go into selling something in the UK (labor costs, maintaining a store, shipping, etc) have all been taxed up to 20-something percent at least one or two times prior to being incorporated into the purchase price, which is taxed again. There are also economies of scale going on here, as the US market is gigantic compared to any individual EU market (and for things like video games, they really are national markets rather than pan-EU, as their are few if any pan-EU distributors/retailers and language differences limit parallel trade anyhow). the bottom line is, you want cheaper video games in europe (and as someone who lives in belgium, i'm with you), lobby your politicians to create reasonable tax regimes and curb inflated government social spending, don't complain about individual companies. also, if you're irish, vote yes on the referendum on lisbon, for christ's sake. it will help create a more streamlined eu government and facilitate the removal of lingering internal economic borders, which will lower prices overall. don't be idiots.