On the month of January 2015, "a Gaming do Brasil" or The Gaming Brazil will cease distribution of Nintendo products in the country of Brazil. For fourteen years, a Gaming do Brasil has been Nintendo's distributor for the Latin American market, and it's been four years since they first attempted to break into the Brazilian market.
While Bill van Zyll, a Director and General Manager for Nintendo, stressed that Nintendo cares about their passionate fans in Brazil, the challenges of the local business environment make their current distribution model unsustainable in Brazil. Without a local manufacturing house, Nintendo had to pay high taxes to import their products from other parts of Latin America. Bill van Zyll said they are working with Juegos de Video Latinoamérica to monitor the business environment to figure out the best way to serve their fans in the Brazilian market.
He later assured that this was only a temporary withdrawal, but they still don't know how or when they will approach the market again. Nintendo has had trouble with the Brazilian market in the past with their online eShop stores not adapting to 2013 bank regulations. The eShops in Brazil still use the US dollar currency, which most Brazilian banks no longer accept. Nintendo has yet to find a way to solve this issue.
The Nintendo Wii U first entered the Brazilian market on November 26, 2013, three days before the one year anniversary of its release in Mexico and South Africa. Since they still hadn't fixed the issue with the eShop on the 3DS, they decided to ship the console without an online store at all. Because of this, Brazilian gamers couldn't even access free downloadable content in games such as Mario Kart 8. Even the small portion of the Brazilian market who could still make transactions with US dollars couldn't access any of the Wii U's downloadable content.
Brazilian gamers can still purchase already stocked Nintendo games and consoles while supplies last. Once they're sold out, Nintendo fans will have to resort to importing the games themselves from other countries. 3DS and Wii U Games imported from outside the country should still work on Brazilian systems, as Brazil is still part of the NTSC-U region. Nintendo has said that they will continue to provide technical support for already purchased games and systems.
(Source via UOL)
