If you keep up with recent Nintendo news you should be aware of the changes in the digital services of the company, among them new useful features like an unified account system for the upcoming Wii U and maybe 3DS, as well as the Mii verse; an application focused in social gaming where you can leave short messages and interact from games.

Whoever, one big change was the new option to download games who were once available only physically, usually games demanding more storage space and developed with a bigger budget than the usual 3DS eShop exclusive titles

With the argument of trying to reach an agreement good enough for both consumers and retailers, Nintendo placed the prices for the digital versions of games the same as the plastic packaged, retail ones. Obviously, in spite of spending the same for the digital version you won't benefit from the perks of trading, selling or borrowing your games since its attached to your console. The only transfer option offered is the one used in case you get a new 3DS and want all your content transfered to the new hardware.

This whole story may look simple for USA and Canada for example, but outside these countries things get a lot fishier.

Lets take Latin-american countries as example, Brazil more specifically.

In Brazil physical video games get charged around +110% their original price, in taxes. Exactly, if you think 40 USD is expensive imagine getting a Wii or 3DS game for the equivalent of 90 USD at most retailers, that is; considering the average Brazilian annual salary is much less than half the one of a USA citizen, this is pretty much unfair, right?

Whoever, there is a big flaw in the video game taxing laws; Digital goods get +0% tax over their prices, which is why the Brazilian eShop oddly never has any kind of separated price over what is stated for each game.

Valve as well as many other digital services have already taken advantage from that in Brazil, pricing prices way bellow the prices expected from physical copies. The PC gaming market was virtually non-existent but now is giving the first few breathes after years of absolute piracy here, thanks to the digital option. PC games at retailers on the other hand, are virtually non-existent, you will only find them at very specific places.

Nintendo probably following their policy of protecting retailers alongside possible pressure from them, priced the digital games in the Brazilian eShop the same price of Brazilian retail copies, that is, with the virtual average ~110% tax over 40 USD, but that being an huge margin of profit, even more when you consider they don't expend with logistics (packaging, transport).

Retailers are killing gaming in Latin-america.

They do no pressure in the government for a tax fix in video game products, and induce as well as pressure companies such as Nintendo and Sony to keep digital prices high, for obvious reasons since they are the ones who sell their stuff in the whole country. If they can pressure big companies, why they can't unite for a fair video game taxation? Did you knew a big percentage of these taxes are because video games are in the gambling category? Shouldn't that be changed?

Brazilians are the ones who spend the most abroad in several countries, because this abusive tax issue doesn't apply only to video games, but that answers why most gaming hardware and software themselves come literally smuggled from abroad, making an already weak industry (game assembly lines, hardware and software) and retail market, even weaker and unofficially throwing Brazilian money away to foreign companies, exactly what the government doesn't want by taxing "imported" goods (video games) that way, which backfires as an incentive to product smuggling, bringing products worth much over the established limit without taxation in civil flights, of course one or two hundred might get caught, but then what about the other 100,000 which entered the country that same day coming back from that amazing Miami trip?

Then retailers fight with companies for higher digital prices so they don't get massacred even more with low sales, which in the end only hurts them even more. The big issue is the fight for fast results and the lack of long-term planning and strategy.

This comes to a much deeper issue affecting 3rd countries, gaming is only a mere, somehow futile example of that kind of dirty playing.

What the proletariats, the lower social classes, the mere mortals can do as of now? Spread the knowledge, and also keep hurting the system the best way they can, doing exactly what they love to do: Buy more, and cheaper, bringing billions worth products from Miami, Paris and London and inserting billions in foreign country economies, good for you who are in a worst economical situation when compared to emergent countries from the likes of B*RICS (Brazil), until stupid administrators finally wake up and fix blatantly clear and loud issues such as this.

Until there, what they want to do, which is protect the internal market and jobs will backfire the way I explained, taking away jobs and weakening the internal market. As commercial flights tickets get cheaper and the lower classes ascend (the so famous class C in Brazil), more and more money will be spent abroad, leaving retailers with a very small percentage of market share, the economy might be more or less good now, but when the table changes the fall will be astonishingly big.

When everything seems good, nobody thinks about the future.

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Side note:

Hello there Brazilian gamer, if you want to buy your digital 3DS games from eShop for the regular 40 USD price, switch your region to an english speaking country and enjoy the opening : ) but don't forget you need an international card since this money will go directly to Nintendo US bank account, wahoooo more Brazilian money abroad!

Retailers ? For me, never again until they fix the absurd prices, I'm very happy with 40 USD. This also applies to Mexico which faces a similar issue with games, and probably other countries with the eShop enabled.