INTERESTING!

I would love to see these on other sites (Play.com particuarly!) so i can just put the code in and grab the game.

I can't help but wonder who takes the hit to give Amazon a cut of the sale price... Nintendo or the Developer or both?

I'm confused.  What exactly is the point of this?  To bypass the points system?  If the games were discounted on Amazon, then maybe I can see the benefits (though I highly doubt we'll see this happen on a service Nintendo directly controls) but otherwise there's not much difference.

At first i thought this would be an interesting way to sell WiiWare games to those consumers who don't have their Wii's online, then i remembered you'd need to have your Wii online to even input the Download Ticket#.

If you have your wii online anyway, wouldn't this just be an unnecessary step to downloading a game?

Most likely more WiiWare exposure, and since the retailer is Amazon, they can have sales. Ever since Amazon opened up their Xbox Live Arcade store, they have sales practically every week. For example Amazon is selling Flock for $10 where as if you purchased it on the Xbox Live Market Place it's still 1200 Microsoft points or 15 dollars.

And Amazon's shop can be a good way to gift one of your friends the game if you don't want to spend 20 dollars on a 15 dollar game (remember that you can only buy Wii Points in denominations of 1000,2000,3000 and 5000 on the Wii Shop Channel or 2000 Nintendo Point Cards in retail).

Brilliant.  I hope this program expands.  I see the most potential in gift giving, since now you can put the code in a birthday card to make the exchange personal, not to mention give away prizes without having to deal with friend codes.  It's also handy for marketing, since Amazon will be recommending this to every registered user with a Wii.  It also takes away any excuse from Wii points haters who demand to pay with real money for one item at a time.

It should be noted that I suggested this idea to Nintendo.

But yeah, this is great and will be great for giving more exposure to WiiWare in general.

As of yet, I'm not entirely certain that most Wii owners even know the service exists. In fact, I'd bet the opposite.

I have a feeling Amazon and/or Nintendo will send out emails and maybe messages on the Wii Message Board.

This is why I welcome this news.

People really don't notice the SHOP CHANNEL icon in the upper right corner of the screen when they turn on their Wii?

You just need to buy more stuff.  :)  I whole-heartedly recommend Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts.

Yeah, the best part of this is that somebody can now give you an Amazon gift certificate and you can use part of it on a WiiWare game, and the rest of it for something else.  You're no longer locked into buying Nintendo points, which of course can only be used to buy Nintendo games on Nintendo's service.

This rules.

Considering that Nintendo is working hard to try and connect every Wii sold, going as far as to give players 500 Nintendo points if they help others connect their Wiis to the internet in Japan, I think S_B is right in his assumption.

I love that everyone in this thread has probably already bought World of Goo.

Wait, what?  You just told me that Nintendo is trying very hard to inform everyone that they can buy games online.  Then you told me that Nintendo is giving about point which can be used to buy a game online for free.  Why do you still think that most people don't know they can buy games online?

I haven't.  Blame fridge cleaning and, since that was fixed, my latest PC game addiction.  Now I'm tempted to buy it this way even though I have points to spare.

Say somebody wants to buy a WiiWare game when they are not at home. They could buy it and then download it when they get home. Or if somebody wants to buy a certain game but don't want to have to buy extra points (like if you have 100 points and want World of Goo, this way you won't have to buy $20 worth of points).

They should start selling World of Goo in stores. Everyone needs to buy it at lease once!

I disagree, I think WOG is vastly over-rated. I think it's a decent game, but overpriced at $15 and I am happy I didn't pay for it (I got it in the NeoGAF Secret Santa program).

We found a witch!  May we burn her?  ;)

Seriously, the game isn't perfect and can be really frustrating at times, but it is easily the best game on WiiWare right now and is the standard by which all future games on the service must be judged now.

It should have been $10 though, $15 is too much for the quality (same thing with Braid on Xbox Live Arcade, that game is a total rip-off at $15 and should have been $5).

We've got 1000 and 3000 point cards at retail now.

We've got the PC version in stores, does that count?

Well, there are other games that don't turn frustrating at all...

In America I only saw 2000 Nintendo Points Cards, I think in Japan they once had a 5000 Wii Points Card bundled with a Classic Controller.

They just recently announced that America would be getting the 1k and 3k cards.

I like the idea because if they expand it to include other games I can put them on my wishlist and stalk it until Amazon offers a special deal on the ones I think are too expensive.

One word: superfluous.

That's not entirely true, as the game costs $15 even when purchased at the shop. So you save a penny. Does Amazon charge sales tax? If not, you've saved even more.

If you live in New York they do, :(.

Stupid Governor Paterson, no wonder the majority of people here in New York don't want him elected to a full term and why he has the lowest approval ratings of any governor in New York history.

Amazon charges sales tax in any state that collects it. I get charged tax for any order I ship to my parents house in Washington even if I pay with an Oregon based account. It doesn't charge tax when it is shipped to my place in Portland though.

Though taxes are getting out of hand I agree. Plus more and more states are looking into taxing digitally distributed goods like MP3s and games.

You whine a lot about being unable to dodge taxes... Over here the sales tax simply applies to everything, no dodging via online orders or stuff.

We whine because many of use were used to the idea that they were not taxable matters. Having them be taxed is relatively new for a number of us.

The tax things pisses me off because it used to be that you would only have to pay taxes for online orders if the company had a physical presence in New York. Our governor decided to make it so any online orders have sales tax now. Amazon is thankfully appealing this since they realize that this could hurt their sales. Governor Paterson has come up with other ideas like extending the 5-cent bottle deposit to bottled-water and iced tea, and to start charging tax for strip clubs and increasing the tax for pop.

I think it's fair towards local stores when online retailers have to pay taxes too, otherwise online retail gets to undercut the local stores automatically.

Then we just shouldn't let any online stores do business because they already have a benefit that undercuts local stores: I don't have to leave my house if I don't want to and I also wouldn't have to spend the gas money if I had to drive to said local stores. That is a benefit many are willing to pay shipping for and will overlook said local stores. This undercuts local stores automatically.

If stores like GameStop, GameCrazy and Wal-Mart offered periodic deals on games like Amazon does I consider shopping there most of the time. If they offer periodic deals on WW games I would go to them over directly purchasing them from the Shop Channel.

They do, their "game days" sale. Also, if you sign up for their email newsletter then you will get a coupon every week, which will either be a percentage off a system's new or used games, or more trade-in credit.

The only one's I have seen are discounts on new games when you trade in old ones. The best I ever saw was this last Christmas with a 'buy 2 get 1 free' type deal. I 'll have to look more closely at those emails since I do get them as I must not read them well enough.
Though they may only offer them on games I'm not interested in.

Here are all of GameStop's Wii games which were a part of their Game Days sale:

http://www.gamestop.com/Browse/search.aspx?N=138+73

Nothing much notable, although didn't Sonic and the Black Knight just come out?

You never know what you'll get with the weekly coupon. It's never for a specific game, though almost always for a specific system. This week's coupon is for 20% off used Game Boy Advance games, last week was used PS2 games. As you can see, it can sometimes be lame, but it is still worth watching to see if it's ever anything good.

I think you forgot to copy the link before you pasted because it is linking to your Lego N64 pic from the Lego RB thread. 
I hate it when that happens, I do the same thing with Photo Bucket. ;)

Leave me alone, it's 5AM here and I still can't figure out why I'm awake or if I'm actually sleeping.

Fixed... zzzzzzzzz

I was actually just wondering that after I saw you posted again on a different thread. I thought "Gee, I should be going to bed soon, wait, if it is this late for me and Mop it up is 3 hours later than I am then (three, four five) Mop it up has been up till 5 AM!"

The local store could offer shipping too but since it's in the same state as you it'd still have to pay tax. The difference is that shipping is an advantage the store can decide on while tax is one that's imposed by the law.

Why don't you complain about people buying stuff from infomercials and shop at home channels? Those operate the same way in that you only pay sales tax if they have a presence in your state (like a warehouse). This is just my governor being too lazy to find other ways to cut spending. New York already has the 2nd or 3rd highest taxes in the country, so to basically start taxing even more just pissed people off and gonna continue driving businesses out of the state.

So include them then, it doesn't matter what's used to send the order. The point is that it's not fair towards local businesses that out-of-state shippers don't have to charge that tax.

So it's fair to also tax and and apply tariffs to foreign made goods to encourage people to buy locally? Why not apply a tax to national chains to encourage you to buy from local stores? I hope Amazon wins it's appeal and gets this ridiculous law struck down. No wonder Paterson has the lowest approval rate of any governor in New York history and why most New Yorkers do not want him elected to a full term (he took over as governor after Eliot Spitzer resigned following that whole prostitution scandal).

It IS fair. If local stores want my business, it's simple. Offer lower prices, and maybe start a reward program like Best Buy has with its Reward Zone program. I know I have bought some stuff at Best Buy specifically to get the Reward Zone points. Why are you sticking up for this idiotic law? It's hurting one company in favor of another. Me buying something from a local Walmart or GameStop (or a local business that is not part of a national chain) is no different than buying from Amazon.

I'm all for supporting the local little poeple, but not blindly. They have to offer something at a competitive rate or have quality service. I won't support an independent coffee shop if their employees are rude to me or they charge a ridiculous amount over another place. Just because a store is little or local does not give it a divine right to exist. It has to fill a need.

It's also 'not fair' that people who live in Vancouver, Washington travel to Portland, Oregon to shop without taxes. We should require Portland businesses to check ID and if a person is from Vancouver the business should charge the appropriate tax and send it to Washington's capital. Because not doing that is unfair to Vancouver, WA businesses because Portland businesses undercut them.

What you are saying is quite close to the same idea except in an online context.

Encourage people to buy locally? How so?

You're strawmanning in the exact opposite direction of what I'm arguing. I'm arguing for equal tax burdens for everybody, not preferrential treatment. The sales tax on online purchases is not a disadvantage for online retailers, it's a rule everybody else has to play by and IMO they should too.

HOW? They have to pay an extra tax that remote businesses don't, how on earth are they supposed to offer lower prices then? How do you propose they undercut someone while having to pay 6% more on taxes?

You want companies not located in a state to unfairly have to suffer loss of buisness and pay money to the state to try and encourage people to buy from stores in the state. That is the same kind of isolationist attitue that people have when they make you pay fees on products imported in order to encourage you to buy locally.

As for you sales tax comment, you obviously don't understand how sales tax works. Companies collect the tax from consumers and then turn it over to the goverment. Retail sales tax is charged only to the end consumer (i.e. you or I going to a store and buying something). Companies don't pay this, so local stores don't suffer more. The reason sites like Amazon and national chains like Walmart can charge lower prices is because they buy in bulk, it has nothing to do with sales tax.

The ONLY people benefitting from charging sales tax to out of state businesses is the state government, that is why they are pushing it so strongly and  you rarely, if ever, see local businesses supporting it since they don't really get any benefit.

Er, hem.  I live in Cook County, home of the nation's largest sales tax.  I buy almost everything I can from online retailers to avoid this tax.

However, it's certainly not fair to the state that I'm not paying these taxes.  And if the states get theirs heads out of their asses and figure out how to collect/share sales tax from online purchases you certainly won't hear me complain about it.

Politics and dirty tricks, I've got no time for stones and sticks!

Let's change the topic please people. Have any more WiiWare games shown up on Amazon?

Well, it was fun while it lasted ;)

Sorry Pale, I guess I convinced myself that we would eventually bring the discussion back around to WW.

And to answer your question, I just did an Amazon search and WoG is still the only one available in the US store.

Another good thing is that you can use Amazon coupons and other discounts to buy WiiWare games.

For instance, ECA members now get 10% off game purchases from Amazon.  I'll have to see if that code applies to digital download purchases.