Xbox Doing What Nintendon’t

by Doc – Owner, Founder, As a Former Finance Guy, Hates When Finance Guys Take Over Companies And Scrap The Parts Customers Like About Them

When I was eight years old, our precious Nintendo Wii suffered a five-foot drop from the top of the dresser to the carpet below, shattering the copy of NCAA Football 2003 (for the Gamecube) inside the machine and ruining the Wii for life.

Nintendo fixed it for free and replaced the copy.

That’s a big part of the reason I am still a Nintendo customer to this day. We didn’t have the money to replace the Wii, or the Gamecube controller that was tripped over, or the game. If Nintendo hadn’t fixed that, I would likely have never bought another Nintendo console again and they would never have sold me two 3DSes, a Wii U, three Switches (don’t judge me), a Switch 2, and the dozens of games, merchandise, DLCs and NSO subscriptions I’ve purchased for those ever since. Eating the cost of that one Nintendo Wii and game made them thousands of dollars since then from customer loyalty.

Three years ago, my Nintendo Switch SD card slot broke. It wasn’t from overuse or anything, it just plain ol’ stopped working. I called Nintendo, who informed me that I’d have to pay shipping and $99 to have it repaired. It was almost cheaper to buy a used Switch console for $130, so I went ahead and did that instead. To be honest, I was disgusted. The customer service was quite polite and friendly (Nintendo usually has good call centers) but what happened to the customer-first buy-it-for-life Nintendo that I grew up with?

Compare this to Asha Sharma, the CEO of Xbox. I read the other day that Sharma has started personally handling support tickets sent in the Xbox in an effort to understand the customer base and how to better serve them. Sharma doesn’t come from the world of video games, but she’s learning the industry correctly; pay attention to the fans, pay attention to the products, and model out the relationship between them. I think that some form of that customer-product understanding is really what’s necessary to manage any industry.

I’ve never been under the impression that Nintendo loves its fans or has some kind of special place in its heart for gamers. That died with Iwata. But you’d think it’s at least good business practice to shell out a little bit of those record profits they’ve been pulling in since the Switch and try to retain customers who have problems like this! If you don’t like your customer, at least respect your customer enough to try to keep them.