Nintendo has updated its terms and conditions surrounding pre-orders that are placed through the Nintendo eShop. Thanks to Resetera member Garou, it’s come to light that you will now be able to cancel pre-orders for games up to seven days before the title launches whereas previously there was no option to back out and reverse the transaction. There’s also been changes to the payment process: billing will now take place seven days prior to the launch date of the game, not at the time of the pre-order. Here’s some more info from the official US Nintendo website but you can read the whole updated terms here.
The required funds will automatically be paid out of available funds at the time of payment. The expected payment date is no sooner than seven days before the product is released. (For bundles with different product release dates, payment will be processed no sooner than seven days before the first product release.)
You can check the product’s expected payment date by selecting Shop Menu in your Nintendo Account settings then selecting Your Pre-orders, or via Your Pre‑orders under Account Information on Nintendo eShop on your device.
Better late than never I guess.
Thank you, Nintendo, for doing the actual bare minimum in favor of the consumers. Who knows what they’ll think up next!
Why not give you the option to refund the game if you never downloaded the game?
I’m going to guess just to keep the process as simplified as possible when coordinating multiple dozen countries’ distribution. Not disagreeing with you, just theorizing an explanation. You have a room full of suits that are looking at a giant list of requirements both legal and technical for all the nations in which they do business. Rather than inventing a complicated system that handles the needs of these countries individually, they just slap on the lowest common denominator.
I respect you, since you’re one of the brightest guys here, but we’re talking digital distribution; not physical. Refunds systems, like Steam’s, is automatic, there’s probably nothing to coordinate other than from their main office in Germany here in Europe, probably one place in US and probably one in Japan – Tencent doing it in China. They went to court here in Europe because they’re breaking the law by denying people refunds of undownloaded games. Nintendo thinks it’s a good business practice to deny people money back when they’ve already have spent it on their ecosystem, and that’s why they’re still clinging to that 7 days limit. They don’t need to take that much consideration into each and every country’s law in Europe if they just follow EU regulations; which is excatly why we have those common trade laws so it won’t be overly to complicated to establish businesses here. Of course there are exceptions form country to country, but it’s not hard to ajust a refund policy that’s more consumer friendly (I know you agree on this point). There’s no excuse for them not doing this before, and that 7 days thing is still anti-consumer af, and even illegal here in Europe, even in this imporves form.
Sounded really aggressive here, but I’m not :P And I’m not bashing you or anything.
I don’t disagree with any of that Kantenstain, and thank you for the compliment to my intelligence. I’m really not trying to justify anything Nintendo is doing. Its just in my experience, “corporate greed” is usually intermixed more than a little bit with corporate laziness/stupidity. My theory wasn’t “Nintendo aren’t being bad guys.” It was “Nintendo is too lazy to do more than an at the minimum solution.”
You compare them to Steam, and I agree. There’s no reason it shouldn’t work like Steam. Shoot, couple years ago I bought a game on Steam, a major AAA title, thought it was really really terrible, and asked for a refund. Got it with no questions asked. But Nintendo is also lacking a few other things Steam has. It is 2020 and Nintendo *STILL* doesn’t have a universal account system. They have no idea how they want to monetize their classic game library. Their voice chat is through a phone app…… ugh, the list goes on.
Nintendo has a God complex. Always has. I wouldn’t put it past them for a second to not think refunds are a necessary part of doing business. But I also wouldn’t put it past them to be dense enough to think that the 7 day time window is more than reasonable and up to industry standards because….. well they’ve shown a thorough ability to convince themselves that what they’re doing is up to standard.
Oh, and for reference, you never have to worry about coming off as aggressive to me, so long as it is in the form of an actual point. I’m more than a little cold and cutting at times myself. I can handle people being blunt, so long as they’re being blunt about something of substance.
Just curious….. what is the actual benefit to preordering a digital game?
If a game offers preload, you get to play it as soon as it goes live on the eshop. Not sure why you would preorder a game unless if you know for sure you’re getting it though.
Why would anyone preorder a digital game? If you wanna download it prior to it’s release, one day is enough! You don’t even PREORDER it, you PREPAY it! It’s not like your “order” is being reserved so you have a copy ready at launch. And if you buy physical your copy is still worth $50 right after your purchase and probably even $20 a few years after. But if you buy digital the value of your copy drops from $60 straight to $0!!!